THE 



Great Pyramid of Egypt : 



THE 
HISTORIC, 
GEOGRAPHIC, 
SCIENTIFIC, PROPHETIC, 
AND ESCHATOLOGIC DISCLOS- 
URES OF THE OLDEST AND MOST 
GIGANTIC OF ALL THE WORKS OF MAN. 






S. H. FORD, D.D., LL.D., 

Editor of ' ' Ford's Christian Repository, ' ' Author of ' ' Historic 
Milestones," "Battle of Freedom," Etc. 



No...9i.?-i-/c 

V C/ 
ST. LOUIS : ""^^^^OFWASHl^i^^ 

Published at Office of Ford''s Christian Repository^ 

1882. 



Er.tered accordirig to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, hj 

S. H. FORD, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 






'^O 14114' ^^^lEc^, 




WHO HAS BEEN MY COMPANION THROUGH LONG YEARS OF 

LITERARY LABOR, AND INTIMATELY ASSOCIATED 

WITH ME IN ALL THE STUDIES OF 

THE GREAT PYRAMID, 

THIS WORK 

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY 



•F/ 



h / 



TH-E fiUTHOIl. 



PREFACE. 




AVING been for years a deeply interested 
student of all that pertains to the Great 
Pyramid of Gizeh — one of the seven won- 
ders of the Ancients, and the only one of the 
seven that remains : having had my very soul 
lifted to a pure and lofty realm of thought, and 
beheld fresh light and beauty play over scientific 
facts hitherto dry or obscure, — my estimate of 
the human race exalted, the origin of that race 
glorified, and my whole range of mental vision 
widened and cheered by these studies — I have, 
by request ^from various respectable sources, 
and by the spontaneous expression of large 
audiences to whom I have lectured in different 
sections, penned these pages, mainly as an in- 
terpretation of Piazzi Smyth's great scientific 
work, with the hope and assured feeling that 
the same pleasure and benefit will result to the 
reader that the endeavor has given to the 
writer. 

S. H. Ford. 
St. Louis, June, 1882. 



The numerous works quoted iu this volume , both scien^ 
tlflc and historic — have been carefully consulted by the 
author. ISTo labor or expense has been spared to reach 
oritrlnal sources and recent discoveries. 



in^iDEx: 



PART I. 

THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC 

POSITION AND SHAPINGS OF 

THE GREAT PYRAMID 

Chapter I. 

Egypt's Place in History 9 

Chapter II. 

Egypt's Future — The Pyramid and the North 
Pole — E. A. Proctor's Problem of the 
Pyramid — Whence this Wisdom '? 15 

Chapter III. 
The Physical Aspects of the Great Pyramid 
— Its Materials— Its size and its Posi- -^ 
tion 31 

Chapter 1Y. 

The Measures of the Great Pyramid — Base, 
Side — The Days, Hours, Minutes and 

Seconds in our True Year 40 

Chapter Y. 

The Sun's Distance from the Earth Symbol- 
ized in the Peculiar Shaping of the Pyr- 
amid 48 

Chapter YI. 

The Precessional Cycle — The Clock of the 
Universe Symbolized in the Diagonal 
Lines of the Pyramid 56 

Chapter YII. 
The Squaring of the Circle — The Problem 

of Ages Solved in the Great ^Pyramid... 63 
Chapter YIII. 
What was the Great Pyramid Built for ? — 69 



INDEX. 



PART II. 

THE HISTORIC AND PROPHETIC APOC- 
ALYPSE OF THE GREAT PYRAMID 

Chapter I. 

The Entrance Forced 81 

Chapteh 11. 

The Descending Passage — the Dragon Star 

— the Downward Drift 93 

Chapter III. 

Sacred Time Measures — From Babel to 

Sinai 101 

Chapter 1Y. 

From Egypt to Bethlehem Ill 

Chapter V. 

The Grand Corridor and Gospel Era — The 
Disrupted Rock and the Resurrection 

of Jesus 117 

Chapter Yi. 
The Gospel Symbolism of the Grand Cor- 
ridor—A Parable in Stone 133 

Chapter YII. 

The Historic Parables and Prophecies 142 

Chapter YIII. 

Eschatology — The Great Tribulation 154 

Chapter IX. 

The King's Chamber— The Stone Chest and 
the Ark of the Covenant — The Jubilee 
Year — Christ's Coming and Kingdom. . 162 

Chapter X. 
The Pyramid and the Pleiades 177 

Chapter XI. 
The Cap Stone and Corner Stone 183 



6 INDEX. 

PART III. 

APPENDIX. 

I. 
Measurements 189 

II. 
Have not the Measures given in this Work 
been Contradicted % 191 

III. 
Letter from the Astronomer Eoyal for Scot- 
land 199 

lY. 
Did the Caphtorim Build the Great Pyr- 
amid ? 202 

V. 
Full Diagram and Indications 205 

VI. 
Dr. Phillip Schaff 's Objection 206 



\ 



PART I. 



The Geographical and Scientific 

Position and Shapings of 

THE Great Pyramid 




.^,Mi^Z,i^ai1l l l^ ^^ i i, l ,: M Av m^a.it^ ^ ^ ^ iaS,imi^a. 




X, 19-20-An Altar to- "^ ^"^1^*^ '^ In the midst of Bgypt. 

''V///|\\\N^ 



CHAPTER I. 

EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

(Jj\ GYPT, to-day, is a miracle of fulfilled 
JQ/ prophecy. 

In the days of Abraham, it was a civilized 
and powerful kingdom. When God delivered 
Israel from centuries of cruel oppression, Egypt 
was the most powerful, as the most advanced, 
nation upon the earth. When Judea rose to her 
zenith under the glorious reign of Solomon, an 
alliance was made with Pharaoh as a material 
advantage, if not an honor, to the wide-spread 
and victorious people of Israel. Centuries be- 
fore Troy fell or Greece rose to power, there 
stood Memphis, on the banks of the Mle, with 
her temples and palaces and granaries, while 
mighty Thebes sent down on the bosom of that 
deified river her tributes of art and wealth to 
the Queen City of the Pharaohs. 

But the crimes of Egypt invoked the curse of 
heaven — crimes surpassing in their beastly enor- 
mity all that was gigantic in her material grand- 
eur. The sacred oracle pronounced her pun- 
ishment and her doom — black as night and as 
terrible as dark. " The burden of Egypt," broke 



10 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



forth the inspired Isaiah: "Behold, the Lord 
rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into 
E^ypt : and the idols of Egypt shall be moved 
at His presence, and the heart of Egypt shall 
melt in the midst of it, and the spirit of Egypt 
shall fail in the midst thereof." * * * " ^nd 
the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of 
a cruel lord ; and a fierce king shall rule over 
them, saith the Lord of Hosts." * "For thus 
saith the Lord God : The sword of the king of 
Babylon shall come upon thee. By the swords 
of the mighty will I cause thy multitude to fall, 
the terrible of the nations, all of them : and 
they shall spoil the pomp of Egypt, and all the 
multitude thereof shall be destroyed." f " And 
when I shall put thee out, I will cover the 
heaven, and make the stars thereof dark ; I will 
cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall 
not give her light. All the bright lights of 
heaven will I make dark over thee, and set 
darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord God." % 
When these inspired men wrote, Egypt was 
in her ancient glory, renowned in arms and 
arts, and ruled by a despot who was adored 
and dreaded as a god. All things pointed to 
the perpetuity of his kingdom and the perma- 
nency of his throne. But upon the summit of 



* Izaiah 19 : 1, 4. 
t Ezf kiel 32 : 11, 12. 
X Ezekiel 32: 7, 8. 



THE GREA T P YRAMID. H 

Egypt's greatness and Pharaoh's pride the 
finger of prophecy wrote : " Thus saith the 
Lord God ; Behold, I am against Pharaoh, 
king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in 
the midst of his rivers, which hath said. My river 
is mine own, and I have made it for myself." * 
His ruin is announced and Egypt is doomed as 
the basest of kingdoms. 

History records the literal fulfillment of these 
predictions. We know that Oambyses defeated 
the Egyptian army and effectually broke the 
power of the Pharaohs at the battle of Pellu- 
slum in the year 527 before Christ. Psammene- 
tus, the last native king, yielded to the arms 
of Cambyses, who strewed the land with the 
ruins of her ancient grandeur, and Persia ruled 
Egypt with a rod of iron through centuries. 

Next came the winged leopard of Macedon. 
At the battle of the Granicus Alexander utterly 
defeated the proud Persian, and the world was 
at his feet. Egypt fell into his hands. He sig- 
nalized her subjugation by founding Alexandria 
on the Mediterranean, at one of the mouths of 
the Nile. At his death Egypt fell to the lot of 
one of his generals, Ptolemy. The Greek ruled 
it for centuries. Greek was the language of the 
court and of philosophy. The Greek held all 
positions of honor and trust. The ancient 
Egyptian was treated as a foreigner in the land 
of his fathers, and Egypt became the meanest 



*Ezekiel29-. 3. 



12 THE GREA T P VRAM ID. 



of nations. The Grecian rule continued till the 
battle of Actium, thirty years before the Chris- 
tian era. Cleopatra, the beautiful, licentious 
queen of Egypt, the last of the Greek rulers, 
became her own murderer rather than grace 
the triumph of Augustus Caesar. Egypt then 
passed into the hands of new masters, and was 
made a province of the world-embracing empire. 
Varied were its fortunes and cruel its suffering 
during its subjugation to Eome. Zenobia, the 
queen of Palmyra, wrested it from the Eomans 
in the year A. D. 270. It was soon retaken and 
the conqueress carried to Eome to follow, laden 
with chains, the triumphal chariot of Aurelian. 

At the division of the Empire, Egypt fell to 
the Eastern Empire, and was governed by the 
lords of Constantinople. For twelve years it 
became the province of its old masters, the 
Persians. Then a native Copt governed it in 
the name of Heraclius, Emperor of Eome. In 
attempting to make himself independent of his 
master, he invoked the assistance of the Arabs, 
and Omar, the successor of the Prophet, easily 
made himself master of Egypt. Under his fero- 
cious rule a still harder fate awaited Egypt. 
The fanaticism of Omar — the Sword of God, as 
he was called — impelled him to exult in the 
destruction of that library which had been the 
pride of the Ptolemies, and unrivalled in the 
ancient world. Christian places of worship were 
given to the flames ; and Christian worshipers 
were forced beneath the uplifted scimeter to 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 13 

acknowledge Mahomet as the prophet of God. 
Conflagrations and massacres filled the cup of 
Egyptian misery to the very brim. Egypt was 
again given into the hands of a cruel lord, and 
a fierce king ruled over it. Oonstantine retook 
Alexandria, but was soon driven out by the 
ferocious courage of the Islams, and Egypt 
became an appendage of the Arabian Emperor, 
whose capital was Bagdad. 

Various sects and dynasties in their struggles 
for supremacy soaked the soil with human 
blood. Under one of these successful rivals, 
Cairo {Bl KaMreli, the triumph of God,) was 
founded. Anarchy, bloodshed, rival and short- 
lived rulers, invasions, desolation, and battles 
formed the record of almost every year, cul- 
minating in 1010, A. D., when El Hakin ruled 
and raved like a demon. In addition to his 
monstrous cruelties, he made the people paj^ 
him divine honors. Slain by his slaves, desola- 
ting wars followed between Kegroes and Sara- 
cens, and between both and Bagdad. Then 
came the Crusaders, followed by pestilence, 
while Saladin gave momentary quiet by his 
more powerful mastery. Darker and darker 
grew the night of Egypt. A line of slave- Sultans 
called Mamelukes, recruited by continued im- 
portations of Tartar captives, ruled Egypt with 
fierce cruelty and rapine for over two hundred 
years — under whose ignoble reign a condition 
of degradation and vileness was reached which 
the imagination cannot picture. 



14 THE GREAT PYRAMlb. 

Egypt now passed into the hands of the Turks. 
In 1798 Kapoleon invaded it. He defeated the 
Mamelukes and subjugated Egypt. But the 
French were expelled in 1801, and Egypt was 
restored to the Turks. Six years afterwards the 
Mamelukes were exterminated by a wholesale 
barbarous massacre. The Khedive of Egypt 
is still nominally subject to the Sultan of Con- 
stantinople, while Egypt in faat is controlled by 
England and France. And so, after this blood- 
stained history of night and oppression, Egypt, 
with her two millions of Arabs and Copts, is 
dominated by the Egyptian Turks, who number 
but ten thousand of her native population. 

Such is the record of Egypt's dark story, 
in veritable accord with the prediction of the 
inspired seer : 

" When the Egyptians shall fight every one against his 

brother, 
And every one against his neighbor; 
City against city, and kingdom against kingdom. 
And the spirit of Egypt sliall fail in the midst thereof 
And I will destroy the counsel thereol ; 
And the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a 

cruel lord ; 
And a fierce king shall rule over them, 
Saith the Lord of Hosts— (Isa. 19 : 2, 4.) 
And it shall be the basest of kingdoms ; 
Neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations." 

— Ezekiel: 2g^ 75. 



CHAPTER II. 
EaTPT'S FUTURE. 

/ I \ HESE prophecies, uttered 650 or 750 years 
I before the Christian era — when Egypt was 
ruled by her native Pharaohs, and rose 
in voluptuous splendor and power above the 
nations of the earth — have been fulfilled in all 
their black and fearful details. 

And now let the closing, and as yet unfulfilled, 
portion of that same burden of Egypt be noted. 
A future day — a change of front—a new and 
glorious era — is in store for that land of dark- 
ness and oppression ; a day when " Egypt shall 
cry unto the Lord, because of the oppressors, 
and He shall send them a Savior and a great one, 
and He shall deliver them. And the Lord shall 
be known in Egypt and the Egyptian shall know 
the Lord in that day.^' 

This era has not yet dawned. Egypt is 
still without the knowledge of the true God. 
The crescent still rules its spiritual night. The 
oppressor still governs its ignorant and obscure 
people. But the fulfillment of the prediction of 
her future deliverance and renovation is as 
sure as the fulfillment of the prophecy of her 
past is patent. The latter is a matter of historic 
fact; the other is a matter of assured expect- 
ancy. 



1 6 THE GREA T P YRA MID . 

But before that day dawns, or at its very 
dawning, it is declared by the unerring oracle : 
" In that day shall there be an altar unto the 
Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and 
a pillar on the border thereof to the Lord. 
And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto 
the Lord of Hosts in the land of Egypt." * 

Now, there does stand in the very midst of 
the land of Egypt a mighty monument — ^the 
loftiest edifice ever reared by human hands ; 
and this towering pillar is so situated that 
while in the midst it is on the border of the 
land of Egypt. 

The accompanying outline map of Egypt will 
show that it is fan shaped. Professor H. Mitch- 
ell, of the United States Survey, was sent by the 
Government in 1868 to report upon the prog- 
ress of the Suez Oanal. Struck with the pecu- 
liar formation of Egypt's northern coast, he 
sought for the central point of the successive 
curves. With the curvature of the northern 
coast on a good map before him, Prof. Mitchell 
searched with variations of direction and radius 
until he had got all the prominent coast points 
to be evenly swept by his arc ; and then look- 
ing to see where his center was, found it upon 
the Great Pyramid, immediately deciding in his 
mind "that that monument stands in a more 
important physical relation than any other 
building ever erected by man." 



^ Isaiah 19: 19, 20. 




MAP OF EGYPT. 



18 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

Led by no theory of the Pyramid, and with no 
reference, if, indeed, any recollection or knowl- 
edge of the prediction of a monumental pillar in 
the midst and on the border of Egypt, he found 
that this towering column stands in the midst of 
Lower Egypt, and yet on the border of its 
fan-shaped outline. Other smaller pyramids 
are there. But the one " close to the northern 
cliff of the Gizeh hill looks out with command- 
ing gaze over the sectoral or fan-shaped land of 
Lower Egypt — from the land^s very center of 
origin, or as from the handle of a fan outward 
to the far-off sea coast. All the other pyra- 
mids are away back on the table land south 
of the great one ; so that they lose that grand 
view from the front or northern edge," 

Egypt, as in no other land on earth, has a 
border-point for its center. At the center (and 
at the same time border point) rises this massive 
superstructure from a base of thirteen acres, 
and swelling in its symmetrical proportions to 
484 feet high. Is this the predicted altar and 
pillar in the midst of the land of Egypt, and on 
the border thereof? What other spot in Egypt 
or on earth meets the requirement of the 
prediction % The prophecy points to the very 
spot on which the pyramid is built. And there 
stands the silent monitor — "a sign and a witness 
unto the Lord in the land of Egypt.'' 

Commentators have usually passed over this 
remarkable passage with scarce a word of 
explanation. Some have given to it a mystic or 



tHiE GREAT PYRAMID. lO 

figurative significance. But there is the literal 
statement : It shall he for a sign and for a wit. 
ness unto the Lord in the land of Bgypt. It has 
however, been recognized by recent eminent 
commentators as indicating a material altar or 
pillar. * Is there any example of a stone altar 
piled for such purpose ? 

Now, we read that the children of Reuben 
and the children of Gad and the half tribe of 
Manasseh, when they came to the borders of 
Jordan, " built there an altar by Jordan — 

A GREAT ALTAR TO SEE TO '^ — or to the vieW. 

They were asked why they built this alongside 
of the altar of the Lord ; they answered that 
they had built it not for an altar of burnt offering 
nor for sacrifice^ " but for fear of this thing, 
saying, in time to come your children might 
speak unto our children, saying. What have ye 
to do with the Lord God of Israel?" " That it 
may he for a witness between us, and you, and our 
generations after us, that we might do the service 
of the LordP 

And they called the altar * Ed ' — i. e. witness 
— "for it shall be a witness between us that 
Jehovah he is God." f 

Similar language is used by the prophet Isaiah 
in regard to the altar and pillar in the midst 
and yet on the borders of the land of Egypt. 



* Jameson. Fiiiicett and Brown, and others. 
t Josliua 22. 



20 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



It shall he for a sign and for a witness unto 
Jehovah in the land of Egypt. 

Shrouded tlirough centuries, it stood on this 
border land looking down on the rise and fall 
of empires, on the wreck of countless genera- 
tions borne to oblivion on the tide of Time, 
unmoved amid the mutations which have lev- 
eled to the dust all cotemporaries. It has in 
these last days been unveiled, and stands un- 
covered as a monument for God. Like a wit- 
ness long lost sight of and wrapt in silence, 
it has suddenly been brought into court to give 
forth its testimony — a witness to Jehovah in the 
'^ Land of Egypt. 




CHAPTER II. 

the pyramid and the north pole — r. a. 
proctor's problem of the pyramid — 
whence this wisdom? 

OLDIEES of France/' said IS'apoleon 
at the battle of the Pyramids, as the 
Turkish cavalry were thundering down 
like a simoon from the desert upon his front ; 
"Forty centuries are looking down upon 
you from the summit of the pyramids." 
And from the summit of this lofty structure 
we can look down, or rather back, upon the 
builders of that wonder of the ages, and mark 
the design and the extent of their almost super- 
human work. 

Forty centuries — four thousand and sixty 
years — have passed since it was completed. 
Writings upon loose stones found in hollows 
in the building, as well as astronomical calcu- 
lations hereafter to be described, prove these 
dates. What^kind of men must they have been 
who projected and reared that immense pile? 
What could have been their object or design? 
Have the purposes for which they planned and 
built it ever been accomplished? Is it a mes- 
sage from the men who lived in the light of 
earth's early morning, before hereditary decline. 



22 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

idolatry, and savagery debauched the race — a 
message coming over the intervening blackness 
of ages to these days of enlightenment, assuring 
us that with all our discoveries, with all our 
attainments we have not reached the heights 
occupied by the progenitors of the race— that 
we have sprung from a glorious ancestry, and 
that we are not the offspring of the oyster or 
the descendants of baboons % 

The Great Pyramid of Egypt, some ten miles 
from the Mle, stands on thirteen acres and a 
fraction of ground — equal to four of our city 
blocks, including streets and alleys. A rock 
hill has been leveled, and on this foundation, 
measured off with accuracy so as to meet the 
mathematical proportions of the building, a 
vast structure, with four sloping sides, has been 
raised to the height of nearly five hundred feet 
— the largest and the highest building ever 
reared by human hands. 

At each corner of this thirteen-acre founda- 
tion, square holes were cut, called corner sock- 
ets. They were first uncovered by the engi- 
neers who accompanied Kapoleon on his expedi- 
tion into Egypt. The wear of centuries has 
defaced the corners of the Pyramid, but the 
socket holes tell exactly the original corners of 
the building. By means of these, not only have 
the base sides of the Pyramid been measured 
and their original length found, but it has been 
scientifically ascertained that they laid off the 
foundation due north, south, east and west, or, 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 23 

in other words, the builders of the Pyramid 
four thousand years ago oriented the work ; that 
is, laid it off according to the four cardinal 
points of the compass, in accordance with the 
most refined principles of modern scientific 
astronomy. 

It is not generally known that to orient a 
building, or to get the true north point, is one 
of the most difficult things in practical science. 
For, let it be observed that what we term 
Polaris, or the north star, is not the true north. 
There are a number of stars called circumpolar, 
which never pass below the horizon, but con- 
tinually revolve around a fixed point in the 
heavens. Very near to this fixed point is the 
one we call the North, or Pole star. To the 
eye it seems stationary, but it also slowly re- 
volves about this fixed point. [Row, the diffi- 
culty in knowing the true north is to find the 
central point around which these circumpolar 
stars revolve— ^the centre of that circle around 
which the North star travels every twenty-four 
hours. How is this to be done 1 In addition to 
this, there is a real, or apparent movement of 
all tbe stars and galaxies in the universe. It is 
called the precessional cycle. By this the cir- 
cumpolar stars change place, or fall back fifty 
seconds and a fraction every year. And from 
this it results that "the same star is not the 
Pole-star in different ages. In the course of 
thirteen thousand years a bright star, called 
Vega, which is now fifty-four degrees from the 



24 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



pole, will be less than tive degrees, and will 
then be the Pole-star. * 

How, then, with the movement of the Pole- 
star around a central point, and this change of 
places in the circumpolar stars, is the true north 
point to be ascertained % 

Eichard A. Proctor, the best known of living 
descriptive astronomers, wrote an article in the 
CoteTrfporary Review for September, 1879, in 
which he says : " I think that if there is one 
purpose among, probably, many which the 
builders of the Pyramids had in their thoughts 
which can be unmistakably inferred from the 
Pyramids themselves, independently of all tra- 
dition, it is the purpose of constructing edifices 
which should enable men to observe the heav- 
enly bodies in some way not otherwise obtain- 
able. If the orienting of the faces of the Pyra- 
mids had been ejffected in some such way as is 
used in the orienting of most of our cathedrals 
and churches — i. e., in a manner quite suffi- 
ciently exact as tested by ordinary observation 
— it might reasonably enough be inferred, that 
having to erect square buildings for any pur- 
pose whatever, men were likely enough to 
set them four square to the cardinal points, 
and that therefore no stress whatever can 
be laid on this feature of the Pyramid's con- 
struction. But when we find that the orient- 



* White's Theoretical and Descriptive Astronomy, 
p. 115. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 25 



ing of the Pyramid has been effected with 
extreme care, that in the CASE of the great 
PYRAMID^ wMcli is the typical edifice of tliis 
kind, the orienting bears well the closest 
ASTRONOMICAL SCRUTINY, we cannot doubt that 
this feature indicates an astronomical purpose as 
surely as it indicates astronomical methods P 

Such is the acknowledgment of an oracle of 
modern astronomy. He admits the true orient- 
ation of the great Pyramid — " bearing the closest 
astronomical scrutiny." He acknowledges that 
this feature indicates the use of astronomical 
methods. What ! were these methods known 
by the men of forty centuries ago ? They are 
the boasted results of modern thought, im- 
provement and research. 

Professor Proctor essayed to account for 
this orientation of the Pyramid a priori, that 
is, by a system of guessing. He supposed that 
it was accomplished by the shadow method — 
just as a sun-dial marks off the shadow made by 
the rising sunbeam. But he acknowledged that 
in order to do this accurately, there must be a 
perfect level surface on which the sun-shadow 
falls. But how could a perfect level be ob- 
tained o^er thirteen acres? He guessed that 
water was forced from the Nile to cover the 
area, and by this means a level obtained. But. 
then, as the sides of the Pyramid are oriented 
— set due north, south, east and west, all the way 
up to the summit — the level must be found at 
every layer of rock all the way up. How to 

3 



26 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

get rid of all this flood of water was a ques- 
tion. He guessed that the subterranean room 
was excavated to receive these numerous sheets 
of water, let oft' through what has been called 
the well running down into this room. But the 
writer of this showed that on the known effects 
of hydrostatic pressure the room and the 
whole foundation would have been shattered 
to fragments by this method. 

But even if the orientation of the Pyramid 
was effected by the shadow method — which 
is next to impossible — it must be remembered 
that the first sun-dial of which there is any 
record, and evidently the first made in historic 
times, was erected in Eome three hundred and 
six years before Christ. * Eighteen hundred 
years before that discovery the Pyramid rose to 
its immense height strictly north and south, 
east and west — more accurately oriented than 
any known building of this day. Whence this 
wisdom ? 

But Proctor gave up his scientific guesses, 
and acknowledges the superior wisdom of the 
Pyramid builders in these words : 

" The position of the base seems to prove be- 
yond all p'ossihility of question that the shadow 
method was not the method on which sole or chief 
reliance was placed^ though this method, must 
have been Icnown to the builders of the Pyramid.^^ 



* George F. Chambers' Descriptive Astronomy, Ox- 
forJ, 1867. 



THE GREA T P YRAMID. 3 9 



not know anything about the general arrange- 
ment of earth and sea surface over the globe, 
and that they were certainly ignorant of the 
existence of America and Australia, of New 
Zealand and Japan. This is all true. 

They figured the earth in their hieroglyphics 
as a flat cake of bread. They could have no 
conception of a nether line or meridian on the 
opposite side ofthis globe-shaped earth. ''Their 
astronomy," says Bunsen, "was strictly provin- 
cial, calculated only for the meridian of Egypt." 
And says Eenan, " not a great poet, nor a great 
artist, not a savant^ nor a philosopher, is to be 
found in all their history." What then ? With 
no scrap of evidence that the imbruted slave- 
nation of the Pharaohs built the Pyramid ; with 
no symbol or hieroglyphic of an idolatrous 
Egyptian character upon it ; there it stands, in 
the center of the inhabitable lands of the earth, 
on the very spot sought for by the highest 
science as the starting point in reckoning 
distances around the earth, by the adoption of 
which all confusion in day countings would be 
avoided. There it stands, forcing on the mind 
the conviction, that a primitive, a lofty, an 
intellectual, a mighty race, with intuitive knowl- 
edge, or by divine aid and guidance, reared this 
oldest and most gigantic of all human worlcs on a 
spot marking earth's center, as no other spot 
does, and pointing out the tru e north as even 
the Pole star fails to do. 



CHAPTER ly. 

THE MEASURES OF THE GREAT PYRAMID — 
BASE, SIDE — THE DAYS, HOURS, MINUTES 
AND SECONDS IN OUR TRUE YEAR. 

rT\ HE thirteen acres which form the founda- 
I tion of the Pyramid were laid off in a 
perfect square. Each side is a fraction 
less than 761 feet, or about the sixth of a mile. 
More accurately, according to the most recent 
measures obtained by scientific methods, each 
side is 9,130 inches. This is the original length 
of the base side as measured from the corner 
socket-holes, as dilapidations have abridged 
the length in the building itself by several 
feet. 

These corner-holes or sockets were first un- 
covered by the engineers or savans who accom- 
panied E'apoleon into Egypt, in the year 1799. 
They published an account of their discoveries 
in a work entitled " Description d^Antiquites. " 
After digging down through the rubbish heaped 
up about the lower part of the building, " they 
recognized perfectly the esplanade upon which 
the Great Pyramid had been originally estab- 
lished ; and discovered, happily, at the north- 
east angle, a large hollow socket worked in the 

40 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 41 

rock, cut rectangularly, and uninjured, where 
the corner-stone had been placed ; it is an 
irregular square which is 3 metres (118 English 
inches) broad, in one direction, and 3.52 metres 
(137.8 inches) in another." "They made the 
same research at the north-west angle, and 
there also discovered a hollow socket ie^tcastre- 
ment) similar to the former. The two were on 
the same level. It was with much care and 
precaution that they measured the base side. 
They found it to be 233.747 metres," or 703.62 
British feet. * 

These corner-stones were again uncovered 
by Ool. Howard Vyse in 1837, and again, in 1865, 
by Acton and Inglis, of the British Ordnance 
Survey, in the presence of Smyth, the astrono- 
mer, and finally, in 1869, when the English Eoyal 
Engineer Surveyors returning from the Sinai 
Survey, were ordered to go to the Great Pyra- 
mid for the special object of measuring its base 
sides. The result announced by them was, that 
the length of a side from socket to socket was 
9,130 British inches. 

Without entering upon the variations in the 
different measurements by the French, by Col. 
Howard Vyse, by Acton and Inglis, this last 
result may be relied upon as the mean between 



* Description d'' Antiquites, Vol. II. The original French 
is quoted by Smyth iti his •'Inheritance in the Great 
Pyramid," p. 24. 
4. 



4-2 THE GREA T P YRAMID. 

all the others, as well as being obtained by the 
most recent and improved methods and instru- 
ments. 

But these are British inches, and it is necessary 
to explain that this inch could not have been 
the unit of measure of the Great Pyramid. It 
leaves fractions in all the measurements, which 
an inch, a fine hair-breadth longer than our 
inch, will not leave. This longer one, by about 
one-thousandth part of an inch, is what is called 
the Pyramid inch. It is so visibly marked in 
the measurements of the Pyramid, that, as we 
proceed, it will be seen it must have been the 
unit of measure used by the architects of the 
building. 

Now^each base side measures 9131 of those 
pyramid inches, and this length of each side 
was essential to the expression or solution of 
the grandest and most important problems in 
nature, viz. : the length of the true year, the 
precessional cycle, the quadrature of the circle, 
and the distance of the sun from the earth. To 
each of these problems, expressed or solved in 
the shapings of this vast structure, our atten- 
tion will now be turned. 

Our inch, hand-breadth, span, foot, cubit, and 
yard, or pace, have all the human form for a 
standard. The thumb is the standard of one 
inch; the hand-breadth of four inches; the 
span, eight inches ; the foot, twelve ; the elbow 
or arm, seventeen, and the step or pace, thirty- 
six inches. But as human feet and hands differ 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 43 



in size, these are not invariable as true stand- 
ards of measure. Now, there is a unit of meas- 
ure: an inch stamped upon the earth^s polar 
axis, which is one-thousandth part, or a very 
fine hair-breadth longer than our common inch. 
That is to say, the distance through the earth 
from one pole to the other, called the polar axis, 
is, according to the British Ordnance Survey, 
five hundred millions, four hundred and twenty- 
eight thousand, two hundred and ninety-six of 
our inches. Beckett Dennison, in his Astrono- 
my, gives five hundred millions five hundred 
thousand as the length of the polar axis, as the 
result of the most reliable modern calculations. 
Now this would make just five hundred mil- 
lions of those inches which were the unit of 
measure in the plans of the Great Pyramid — an 
inch which is one thousandth part longer than 
the British inch. Then it is demonstrated that 
with this pyramid inch the earth's polar diame- 
ter measures, with no fractional remainder, 
five hundred millions of inches. From this it 
would appear that " God, who continually geom- 
etrizes," as Plato said, laid off earth's central 
line from pole to pole by the inch marked in 
the measures of the Pyramid. At least it is cer- 
tain that the inch or unit of measure in the Pyr- 
amid — that which measures its various lines 
without fractional remainders and with corre- 
sponding adjustments — is the inch that meas- 
ures the earth's polar diameter without a frac- 
tional remainder. 



44 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

But more than this, it is found that twenty- 
five of these earth-measuring inches (or, as they 
are now called, pyramid inches) were the length 
of the sacred cubit of the Hebrews — the stand- 
ard rule given by the Lord to Moses, by which 
to measure the Ark and the Tabernacle. 

The length of the cubits of Babylon, Persia, 
and Egypt was some five inches less than the 
sacred cubit. We therefore read of the •' iron 
bedstead of Og, king of Bashan," being " nine 
cubits the length thereof, and four cubits the 
breadth of it, after the cubit of a man." * Here 
is the distinction marked between the cubit of 
a man and the cubit which God gave. 

In Ezekiel's vision of the Temple, we read ; 

" And these are the measures of the altar 
after the [sacred] cubits. The cubit is a [man's] 
cubit and a hand- breadth." And again, " Behold 
a wall on the outside of the house round about, 
and in the man's hand a measuring reed of six 

cubits, BY THE CUBIT AND A HAND-BREADTH." f 

Hence it is placed beyond question that the 
Lord's cubit differed from the " cubit of a man," 
the sacred cubit from the profane, and that this 
sacred cubit was a hand-breaath, or some four 
inches, longer than the Egyptian cubit, (nearly) 
21 of our inches. 

Two hundred years ago Sir Isaac ]S"ewton, 
in a dissertation on cubits, proved, (1) from 



* Ezekiel 43 : 13. Chap. 40. 5. 
t Deut. 3 : 11. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 45 



the Talmudist's proportion of the human body ; 
(2) from Josephus' description of the pillars of 
the Temple ; (3) from the length of a Jewish 
sabbath day's journey; (5) by measure of the 
steps in the inner court of the Temple ; (6) from 
the Ohaldaic and Hebrew proportions to the 
cubit of Memphis, and (7) from the statement 
by Messennus as to the length of a supposed 
copy of the sacred cubit of the Hebrews secretly 
preserved amongst them — tlaat the Israelites had 
a sacred cubit long before they went down into 
Egypt. He proved that this cubit was longer 
by several inches than the Egyptian one, and 
that the sacred cubit was treasured up by 
Israel and employed for sacred purposes only. 
The length of this cubit ]!!^ewton showed to be 
twenty-five and seven-hundreths of our inch, 
with a possible error on one side or the other. 
This approximate length of the sacred cubit 
has been determined by more recent calcula- 
tions to be exactly twenty-five and twenty-five 
thousandths of our inch. This is, to a fraction, 
the twenty-five inch cubit which is in several 
ways stamped upon the Pyramid. 

There is a deep sunken niche in one of the 
interior rooms, soon to be described, which un- 
mistakably marks this* sacred cubit. It is not 
in the central vertical line of the wall, but is 
southward just the exact quantity of the sacred 
cubit, 25.025 English inches, or 25 earth-meas- 
uring and pyramid inches. The deep niche was 
evidently sunk there to mark off the twenty- 



46 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

five inch sacred cubit — that is, fix)e times five of 
those inches of which five hundred millions 
measure, without a remainder, the earth's polar 
axis. 

Now going back to the accurately-measured 
length of each side of the Pyramid's base of 
9131 inches, and dividing this number by the 
sacred cubit which is marked off on the wall of 
the queen's chamber, the result is : 

9131 -=- 25 rrr 365.242 + '^ 

Now the length of our tropical year is 365. 
242 + This in days and parts of a day is 
365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 49 seconds, 
with an impracticable fraction. This result 
agrees minutely with the symbolization of the 
Pyramid. The days, hours, minutes and seconds 
composing our solar year are stamped upon the 
stony leaves of this massive and mysterious 
book. The added lengths of the four sides of 
the base equal 36524.2 of those same pyramid 
inches, or at the rate of just one hundred for 
each day and part of a day of the year. 

All this could not be mere accident. It is 
evident that the architects of the Pyramid knew 
the length of the year and laid off its 9131 inches 
of base-side length so that the days, hours, min- 
utes and seconds which make up the true year 
should be plainly symbolized in the Pyramid's 
construction. 

Now we know that the ancient nations — and 
even the Greeks in their palmiest days of knowl- 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 47 

edge — determined the length of the year by 
the moon. Twelve lunar months, making 354 
days, made their year. This being found to be 
eleven days defective, eleven days had to be 
added in order to preserve the year in constant 
relative position to the seasons. The Egyptians, 
who divided their year into three seasons of 
four months each of thirty days, added five 
days to the end of the twelfth month. Not till 
the time of Osesar was the solar year of 365 
days 6 hours adopted by the Eomans. But this 
solar year, to its minutest fraction, was known 
to the builders of the Pyramid two thousand 
years before the adoption of the Julian calen- 
dar. 

Again may it be asked, Whence this wisdom f 
Did it originate in the minds of the savage 
slaves of a barbarous despot ? And if not, then 
what kind of men were the ancestors of our 
race? 




CHAPTER V. 

THE SUN^S DISTANCE FROM THE EARTH SYM- 
BOLIZED IN THE PECULIAR SHAPING OF THE 
PYRAMID. 

/TV HE length of the solar year is dependent 
1 . on the distance of the earth from the sun. 
It is therefore a wonderful fact that in 
addition to marking off the foundation sides of 
the Pyramid so that it should number exactly 
as many sacred cubits as there are days in the 
year, the builders so shaped its four corners, 
from base to summit, that it would symbolize 
the earth's distance from the sun. 

The Pyramid has that angle at the sides (to 
be noticed directly) which brings out the pro- 
portion of a diameter to the circle known as tt. 
But it has another acuter angle at its corners. 
Thus for every ten units which the structure 
advances inward it rises nine of the same units 
sunward. To have a clear conception of this, 
let the reader imagine himself standing at one 
of the corners of the Pyramid aaid looking up 
to its top. The distance inward at each step 
at this corner will be, as a necessity, greater 
than the distance inward at the sides of the 
building. And the slope will be less steep all the 
way up to the top. Kow this slope is an angle of 

48 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 49 

41' 59^ 18.7", while the sides slope inward at 
an angle of 51® 51' 14.3". This latter angle was 
essential to the proportion of a diameter to the 
circumference of a circle; the other to this 
proportion of 10 inches inward to 9 sunward. 
And so this 10 by 9 proportion is stamped on 
the Pyramid's receding and ascending layers of 
solid rock as it was also on the casing stones 
which at first " shingled " it from pavement to 
apex. 

This nine by ten shaping of the Pyramid 
proves that its architects understood — 

Our System of Enumeration. 

The very name of the Pyramid is said, by 
Chevalier Bunsen, to mean Pyr, "division " — like 
peres^ " divided," as interpreted by Daniel — and 
met, "ten," that is, the division of ten. Ten and 
its division, five, are marked all over the shap- 
ings of the vast structure. The evidences are 
plain on the lines of the Great Pyramid that its 
architects knew the powers by this decimal 
system. And how wondrous that simple sys- 
tem is ! If it is not divinely derived, it is the 
greatest achievement of the human intellect. 
Do we ever think of the completeness of this 
system of tens — how changing the position of 
a figure increases it ten-fold — how the 3 be- 
comes 30, and then 300, and then 3000, and on 
to millions and trillions simply by putting the 3 
farther along in the line of figures ? Logarithms 
in their almost infinite calculations are based 



50 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

on this simple element. Was ever anything in- 
vented by man more wonderful than this % Can 
anything he can do or imagine surpass it % Yet 
this was known to the builders of the Pyramid, 
for there it is stamped upon its shapings. 

Mne, the climax and the amount of our sys- 
tem of numeration, is everywhere seen marked 
on the Pyramid. There are four sides and five 
corners (including the head corner), making 
nine. There are nine thousand and a ninth 
inches in each of its base sides. There are four 
times nine great granite stones spanning its 
grand gallery, while this nine by ten shaping is 
a characteristic of the work. 

Now how wonderful these nine digits ! They 
meet all the wants of science in its vast calcu- 
lations. They meet all the needs of commerce. 
It is impossible to conceive of any improve- 
ment or addition to those nine simple digits, 
which must have been conceived and used be- 
fore letters, or our so-called Arabian characters, 
were used to express them. 

" The idea of number," says Greenleaf, " is 
the latest and most difficult to form. Before the 
mind can arrive at such an abstract conception 
it must be familiar with that process of classifi- 
cation by which we successively ascend from 
individuals to species, from species to genera, 
from genera to orders. The savage is lost in 
his attempts at numeration, and significantly 
expresses his inability to proceed by holding up 
his expanded fingers or pointing to the hairs of 



TtiE GREAT PYRAMID. 5l 

Ms head." And how could savage or semi-sav- 
age, or even highly educated men, unaided, orig- 
inate the system which meets every requirement 
of almost infinite calculation, and the improve- 
ment of which cannot even be imagined? 

Did the reader ever ponder the peculiar pow- 
ers of this number nine % One only can be 
mentioned in passing. In all its multiplication 
nine will be found in the result. Twice 9 are 
18, and the 8 and 1 are 9. Three times 9 are 27, 
and the 2 and 7 are 9. It is so up to 9 times 20 
=180, the 1 and 8 are 9. Then commencing at 21 
the sum is 189, two 9s. Going on in this series of 
multiplying by a system, 9 is found in the added 
results without a remainder through all its mul- 
tiplication. This may also be classed with acci- 
dents ; but to any honest-thinking mind there 
is thorough design, well-planned system in it. 
Who originated it ? It is traced as far back as 
primitive man, whose life was nine hundred 
years. It is stamped on the Pyramid, the oldesi 
as it is the most gigantic of human work. Were 
these primitive men familiar with " the idea of 
number — the latest and most difficult to form?" 
Or was this idea of number God-given and be- 
yond the powers of human invention % 

But leaving this, we turn again to the fact 
stamped on the diagonal shapings of the Pyra- 
mid. Its corners recede inward ten units for 
every nine which it rises sunward. Now this 
nine by ten indicates 10^ : that is, 10 raised to 
its ninth power, or one thousand millions, and 



52 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

this result, multiplied by the Pyramid^s height 
and reduced to English miles, gives the distance 
of the sun from the earth. 

Mr. Petrie having found that the circle typi- 
fied by the base symbolized a year, or the 
earth's annual revolution round the sun, conclu- 
ded that the sun's distance was represented 
by the vertical height, and in proportion to 10^, 
or 1,000,000,000. Mr. Petrie at once took the 10^ 
or ten raised to its ninth power, one thousand 
millions, and multiplied this by the height of 
the Pyramid, 5,818.+ English inches, making 
5,818,000,000,000 inches, and reduced this to En- 
glish miles. The result was 91,840,000. 

But the then mathematically established dis- 
tance of the sun from the earth was ninety-five 
millions and over. The calculations of the 
Pyramid's 10^ came short by over three millions 
of the real sun's distance, as settled by the 
highest authorities in astronomy. Mr. Petrie, 
therefore, threw away his papers and calcula- 
tions, and would have thought no more of 
them, but that while occupied in his professional 
chemical engineering, he read in the scientific 
journals, that this number as the sun's distance, 
undisputed so long, was erroneous. 

Observations had been made_, and results col- 
lected from both hemispheres, and the newly 
computed siin-distance given to the world. 
One group of astronomers of several nations 
declared the true mean sun-distance to be 
about ninety-one and a half millions of miles. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 53 

Another group of the same, and of other 
nations, announced it to be from ninety-two 
and a half to ninety-three millions of miles. 
Such was the intensity of interest felt in this 
discussion that a duel of swords was expected 
and prepared for between two of the high- 
est living authorities in astronomy — M. Le 
Yerrier, and M. DeLaunay. In the midst of 
this disputation, Mr. Petrie returned to the 
calculations he had made years before from 
the ten by nine shaping of the Pyramid, and 
showed that the result from them was exactly 
the mean between the figures insisted on by 
the contending astronomers — and that this re- 
sult, stamped on the Pyramid, is in itself, and 
in all its grand simplicity and antiquity, a simple 
representation of all the laborious and expen- 
sive efforts to find the true sun-distance. 

The expensive arrangements made by differ- 
ent nations to observe the transit of Venus in 
1874, and the years of untiring calculations 
which have followed those observations, show 
how difficult is the task to find the true distance 
of the sun. The Greeks supposed it was ten 
miles. They increased this to ten thousand. 
After long centuries, advanced science again 
increased this to two millions and a half. Then 
Kepler showed it to be thirty-six millions. 
Abbe LaCaille, of France, by means of trans- 
equatorial observations, declared it to be 
seventy-eight millions. The leaders of math- 
ematical astronomy at the beginning of this 



54 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

century, after years of patience and vast 
calculations, announced it to be a little over 
ninety-five millions. Then came the world- 
united effort in 1874, to ascertain the true 
figures. Iron ships, electric telegraphs, exquisite 
telescopes^ photographic machines of enormous 
power, chemicals of wondrous nicety as well as 
of deadly subtlety, refined regulator clocks, 
and still more refined chronographs, transit 
instruments, equatorial spectroscopes, polaris- 
copes, altitude-azimuth circles, with every 
modern invention that could aid, — were made 
tributary to the grand effort to find the distance 
of the sun from the earth. But men who had 
studied the Pyramid declared the result was 
there, stamped on its shapings four thousand 
years ago. 

The expensive national expeditions of 1874, 
to observe the transit of Yenus claimed to be 
successful. Years have passed and some of 
the results have been given to the public : 

¥iY8t — The Astronomer Eoyal of Greenwich 
was called on to report to the English Parlia- 
ment the new sun-distance. He reported it as 
ninety-three millions and some hundreds of 
thousands of miles. 

This report and its accompanying papers were 
reviewed by the Eoyal Astronomer, at the Cape 
of Good Hope, and found erroneous — the true 
result being ninety-one millions and some hun- 
dred thousands of miles. 

The Greenwich astronomers then revised 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 55 

their report and reduced the result to nearly 
the same figures indicated in South Africa. 

Second — A notable member in the French 
Academy, M. Puiseux^, computed some of the 
observations of two of the French Yenus- 
Transit Stations, viz. : Pekin and the Island of 
St. Paul, in the Indian Ocean. From these he 
deduced the sun distance to be 91,840,271 miles. 

Now, the 10^ of the Pyramid's shape — that 
is 5,818+ inches, its height, multiplied by one 
thousand millions, brings 91,840, only 270 miles 
less than the French savant's result, and about 
the same as the English estimate which Prof. 
R. A. Proctor pronounces a satisfactory one. 

Is not this wonderful ? When M. Puiseux's 
computations were announced in the Paris 
scientific journal called Les MondeSj Chanoine 
MoignO;, the editor, accompanied it with the 
exclamation : La Grande Pyramide a vaincu ! — 

THE GREAT PYRAMID HAS CONQUERED ! 

It has stamped upon it in symbols which no 
change in language can affect, this knowledge 
which, with all assistance of governments and 
all the aid of astronomical and mathematical 
instruments, the men of this day cannot attain 
to. How did the architects of the Pyramid 
attain to it? Could men in that early day, 
when they were comparatively few, and con- 
fined to a limited portion of earth's surface 
grasp and solve these sublime problems ? Yet 
there is the solution in that " oldest and most 
gigantic of human works." 

Whence this wisdom ? 



CHAPTEE VI. 

THE PRECESSIONAL CYCLE — THE CLOCK OF 
THE UNIVERSE SYMBOLIZED IN THE DIAGO- 
NAL LINES OF THE PYRAMID. 

WE have seen that the sacred cubit of 
twenty-five inches is contained 36524 
times in the base side length of the 
Pyramid — that is, there are to a fraction the 
number of cubits in each side that there are 
days, hours,^minutes and seconds in our true 
year. But there is a grander movement than 
this observable in the heavens. It is the real 
or apparent march of all worlds and star-galax- 
ies along a circuit of unmeasured millions of 
miles. It takes each star nearly twenty- six mil- 
lions of years to complete this circuit. This 
stellar round has been very properly termed the 
grand chronological dial or clock of the uni- 
verse. It is the PRECESSIONAL CYCLE. " The 

appearance is as though the equinox goes forth 
to meet the sun; and hence the phenomenon is 
called the precet^sion of the equinoxes. The 
scientific expression of this fact is, by saying 
that the equinoxes retrograde on the ecliptic 
until the line of the equinoxes makes a complete 
revolution from east to west." * 



* Olmstead's "Astronomy," p. 104. 56 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



But these scientific terms are but feebly ap- 
prehended even by educated people. We know 
what it is for one event to precede another. We 
know that equinox means equal nights, or the 
time when the days and nights are equal. We 
know that this occurs on the 21st of March or 
on the 22d of September — called respectively 
the vernal and autumnal equinox. A simple 
illustration will make it plain to all : 

Suppose we go to a selected spot, say the 22d 
of September, 1881, at 12 o'clock at night by 
exact sun-time, and notice a star immediately 
over our heads. We mark the spot where we 
stand, and observe the star (not a planet, of 
course,) so that we shall recognize it again. 
Suppose we return to that identical spot one 
year from that date — 22d September, 1882, at 
the same moment by exact sun-time, and look 
up for that same star. It is not where it was 
one year before. It has moved eastward 
(50.1'^) fifty and one-tenth seconds of a degree 
Suppose we come to the same spot at the same 
instant the next year, it will have moved on 
an additional fifty seconds and one-tenth. The 
following year it will have moved another 
fifty seconds, and still om, ot?, every year fifty 
seconds and a fraction, until it has passed down 
the horizon and shines upon those on the oppo- 
site side of the globe at that instant of the 22d 
of September. And still it will move on in its 
steady time-beat, fifty seconds and a fraction 

5 



58 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



every year, until it has passed along the whole 
circle of the heavens and returns to that 
same spot where it was seen above our heads 
the 22d of September, 1881. But twenty-five 
thousand six hundred and twenty-seven years 
have elapsed during that Grand Cycle, It takes 
those centuries for each star and galaxy to com- 
plete that stellar round in which all alike are 
moving to a wondrous measure. This is the 
' precessional cycle — or precession of the equi- 
noxes. It is the clock of eternity that beats 
years as ours beats minutes. * 

By this celestial chronometer the time can be 
told when any star shines on a given spot and 
when it will shine there again. 

This real or apparent movement of the stars, 
of 50'M seconds of a degree, or 22 minutes 21 
seconds of time, makes the whole length of the 
stellar round 25,827 years, according to the most 
recent and careful calculations, f 



* LaGrange's "Astronomy." 

f The difficulty of reckoning the time of this cycle will 
appear by noticing the following attempts to state the 
lencrlh of this period : 

By Tyeho Brahe 25,816 years 

Cassini 24,800 " 

Eicciolus 25,920 " 

Bradley 25.740 '' 

La Place..... , ...25;816 " 

Bessel 25,868 " 

Herschel 25,868 " 

Newcomb ....25,800 " 

White 25,817 " 

This last quoted author is the authority in most of our 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 59 

This peculiar celestial cycle, the grand chro- 
nological dial in fact of the Great Pyramid, is 
defined by the length of the two diagonals of 
the base. These two lines, from the opposite 
corners, lay out the whole portion of the struc- 
ture. They are the two longest lines. Their 
added lengths are 25827 pyramid inches, equal 
to the mean result of all the varying calcula- 
tions of the length in years of the precessional 
cycle. 

Farther still this grand time cycle is memori- 
alized in the upper and principal room in the 
Pyramid. The floor of this room is 1702 inches 
above the foundation. It has been shown by 
Professor Hamilton L. Smith, of Hobart Col- 
lege, Kew York, that the circuit of the Pyramid 
at the level of this room equals 25,827 pyramid 
inches — the length in years of the great pre- 
cessional cycle. And Proctor has found the 
same symbolism, or as he calls it " coincidence, 
in the outside cubits when taken instead of 
inches." 

These facts in regard to the precessional 
cycle make it (as in fact it is) the grand chrono- 
logical dial of the Great Pyramid. By it Sir 



universities and his work is used as a text book. Recent 
calculations make the length of the precessional period 
nearer to the figures he gives than to those given by 
Bessell. This difference grows out of the different meas- 
ure of theannualprecession. White maltes it 51.2" ; Her- 
schell 51.1". 



60 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

John Herschel told when a star looked down 
the descending passage of the Pyramid, thus 
identifying the time of its erection. By this 
greatest of time cycles, it is also found, as 
we shall see farther on, that the Pleiades were 
on the meridian at midnight, in Egypt, the year 
the Pyramid was completed. So that its sum- 
mit pointed like an index finger to that central 
cluster around which all the starry hosts move. 
It will be seen from all this that those supposed 
shepherd kings who built the mighty structure 
in the very center of earth's habitable lands 
and on the border and yet in the midst of the 
land of Egyptj^knew this movement of the stars, 
and were able to calculate, with an exactness 
that modern science has not reached, the time 
of the precessional cycle — 25,827 of our years. 
Whence this wisdom f Did these primitive 
men grasp at one bound this vast problem which 
the last three hundred years of patient research 
by the greatest of minds with all modern aid, 
have only partially solved ? Were these 
"keepers of flocks " on the borders of the 
Lybian desert able to simplify those vast cal- 
culations in regard to the sun's distance and the 
precessional cycle, and stamp the results in 
readable symbols on that oldest and most 
gigantic of all human worTcs f Few in this day 
of enlightenment can even follow out these cal- 
culations. Though they are taught in our school 
books, illustrated by engravings, explained in 
popular lectures^ and made comparatively easy 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 61 

by telescopes and instruments of wonderful in- 
vention, yet how few can comprehend or even 
follow their methods, or form a clear conception 
of the grand facts ! How then could the men 
of forty centuries ago have known them and 
embodied them in this memorial pile % Either 
there is proof of supernatural knowledge 
granted to the architects, or else those men, in 
an age of absolute scientific ignorance, pos- 
sessed astronomical knowledge surpassing that 
attained to in this boasted nineteenth century. 
And just as the true sun-distance is, by the 
very latest results of years and years of calcu- 
lation, found to be that symbolized in the Pyr- 
amid's shapings, so the more recent calcula- 
tions of the precession of the equinoxes, center 
upon the period marked by the added diagonal 
lines of the Pyramid — 25,827 years. Again we 

ask, WHENCE THIS WISDOM % 



•iH^itA 



(eience of Circle v^ 




.^ 



Four sides of Square, 36524 + 



CHAPTEE YI. 

THE SQUARING OF THE CIRCLE — THE PROBLEM 
OF AGES SOLVED IN THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

• • / I \ HE quadrature of the circle,'^ as it is 
I called, "consists in finding a square 
equal in surface to a circle the radius 
of which is known.'^ * The solution of this prob- 
lem has interested mathematicians from the days 
of Archimedes to the present hour. And quite 
right that it should. It is the basis alike of 
practical mathematics and high astronomy. In 
Dr. Olinthus Gregory's great work entitled 
"Mathematics for Practical Men," the uses of 
this problem are given in fifty-four different 
forms, showing its value in mechanical construc- 
tions. Years since, the Eoyal Society of Lon- 
don, and also the Academy of Science of Paris, 
offered a prize to any one who would fully solve 
this problem, and the fractional answer was run 
out to the two hundredth decimal place, still 
leaving it with an infinitesimal plus. 

Now the Pyramid is just such a height, con- 
sequent on a particular angle of slope, that this 
height is the radius of a circle equal to the four 
sides of the base — thus practically solving the 
problem of the ages. 



* Davies' Legendre, Book 5, Prop. 16. 63 



64 THE GREA T P YRAMID. 

In other words, the builders of the Pyramid 
laid off the foundation in the form of a ^'square 
equivalent in surface to a circle the radius of 
which was JcnownJ^ * This radius was the verti- 
cal height of the Pyramid. The radius of such 
a circle must he Jcnown. The Pyramid had con- 
sequently to be built at such an angle of inclina- 
tion that the height should be this Icnown radius. 
" To square the circle (says Legendre) is to find 
the circumference where the radius is given, 
and for effecting this, it is enough to know the 
ratio of the diameter to the circumference." 
Kow, these progenitors of the race planned a 
building of such peculiar shape and size that its 
height should be the radius of a circle equal 
exactly to the perimeter of the base. Hence, 
they must have known, when they laid off' the 
foundation, what must be the surface of a square 
to be equal to such a circle as they had in mind. 
They had then to know what the diameter of 
such equal circle would be. They had then to 
plan the slope of the sides so as to make the 
height just half the dianeter of this equal circle. 
All this must have been known before a stone 
was laid. 

Whence the knowledge ? Is it possible they 
possessed it % 

Now it has been found (first by John Taylor, 



* I use the words of Davies' Legenclre in defining the 
quadrature of a circle to show how completely the Pyra- 
mid meets that definition. 



The great pyramid. 65 

of London, 1855,) that both in the receding 
courses of stones which form steps at the sides 
of the Pyramid, and also in the casing stones 
which originally fitted into these layers or steps, 
the angle of slope is 51^ 51'. This angle of 
slope from the base upwards gives such a height 
to the structure as must necessarily result from 
this angle of slope. It is easy, therefore, (by 
finding where these angles of incline would 
meet each other) to calculate what was the orig- 
inal height of the structure. It has been de- 
monstrated to have been originally 5813 pyramid 
inches. 

Now this height was the Icnown radius. What 
proportion does it bear to a circle ? This is the 
problem of the ages. Can we believe that it was 
practically worked out and memorialized on the 
borders of the Lybian Desert forty centuries 
ago? 

The original height of the Pyramid was 5813 
inches. This was the known radius. Twice 
that number, 11626, was the diameter of a circle 
equivalent to the four sides of the base. The 
question to be solved by the architects of the 
Pyramid was this. What ratio does this diameter 
bear to the square formed by the four sides of the 
base f 

Well, the four sides of the base, each one 
9131 -f- inches, make 36524+ inches. 

The diameter of the desired circle (twice the 
vertical height of the Pyramid) 5813x2=11626. 

Now, then, to ascertain what proportion this 



66 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

diameter haste the four sides the one is divided 
by the other, and the almost magical number 
is the result: 3.14159 + . 

Then, for all practical purposes, the problem 
is solved. The proportion of a diameter to a 
circle, and the square equal to a circle, were 
expressed in the height and four sides of the 
Pyramid in language which can never change 
or die while earth lasts or men live. 

The architects of the Pyramid must have 
known these proportions before they planned the 
work. They must have determined the height 
of the structure and the angle of slope to a mi- 
nute fraction so as to bring out the exact height. 
They must have known that this pre-determined 
height would be the length of a radius which 
would draw a circle whose circumference would 
be equivalent to a square of certain dimensions. 
These dimensions of the square were decided 
on 36524. Then what must the height be ? This 
must be exactly 5813 inches to" describe a cir- 
cumference equal to four times the length of a 
side of the base. What angle of slope is neces- 
sary to this height % It is found to be of neces- 
sity, as a geometrical problem, 51°, hV and 
43.3". All these calculations, requiring the 
highest culture and profound thought, are 
worked out in the base side, the height, and the 
angles of the Great Pyramid. But all this could 
not have been done unless these men knew the 
TT proportion — knew the 3.14159 ratio of a diam- 
eter to a circle. It is certain that these primi- 



The GREAT PYRAMID, 67 

jtive men knew this mathematical proportion in 
a way few know it in these days of general 
enlightenment. They knew them and worked 
them out in this " oldest and most gigantic of 
human work.'''' They solved the most important 
and most difficult of problems, and impressed 
and expressed it on that lofty pile of massive 
rock which no change of language can affect, 
but which can be seen and read by all men of 
every age and tongue. Whence this wisdom f 

But this is not the only expressed solution of 
this quadrature of the circle in the plan of the 
Pyramid. 

It was discovered by Oapt. Tracy of the Brit- 
ish Navy in 1873 that the pyramid inches in what 
is termed the King^s Chamber (the principal 
room in the building) stand for cubits outside 
the Pyramid. From this the following results 
were deduced by eminent professional mathe- 
maticians : * 

The length of the King's Chamber is 412,122 
inches ; take this as the side of a square, find its 
perimeter, and throw that into a circular shape. 
The radius of such a circle will be found to be 
the height of the Pyramid in cubits, viz : 232,520, 
thus expressing in another way the remarkable 
fact that the Pyramid's height is the radius of a 



* Capt. William Petrie, Civil Engineer ; Capt. Tracy, 
Royal Navy ; Prof. Hanailton Fish, Hobart College, N. Y. 5 
H. B. Wrey, Tawstock, England. 



68 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

circle wMch is equal to the sum of the four 
sides of the base. 

This same feature is symbolized in another 
form by the length of this same King's Cham- 
ber, so that this problem of squaring the circle 
governs the whole design and shapings of the 
mighty structure. 

]S"ow, let any one calmly reflect on these dis- 
closures and ask, Could it be that this knowl- 
edge belonged to men just emerging from sav- 
agery? Indeed it may be fairly asked. Could 
such knowledge, such profound thought, such 
mental grasp, such principles underlying astron- 
omy and mechanical arts, have been possessed 
by men however strong and mighty, of that 
primitive age, unless communicated by eternal 
wisdom imparted to the first man and handed 
down along the line of those patriarchs of the 
race, whose lives numbered centuries? Any 
rational conclusion proves that the Biblical ac- 
count of man's origin, and God's intercourse 
with him, is true. 




CHAPTER yill. 

WHAT WAS THE GREAT PYRAMID BUILT FOR ? 

/ I \ HE question may now be asked, For what 
1 object was the Pyramid built? 

Various theories and traditions have 
been and still are advanced in answer to this 
question. 

Josephus, the Jewish historian, relates as an 
historical verity that " Seth and his descendants 
were the inventors of that peculiar wisdom 
which is concerned with the heavenly bodies 
and their order," "and that their knowledge 
might not be lost they made two pillars, the one 
of brick the other of stone, to preserve their 
discoveries," adding, ^''Now this (pillar of stone) 
remains to this day in the land of Siriad 
(Egypt.)"* 

The Arabians had a tradition very similar to 
the foregoing in a manuscript written by one 
Aou BalM/i^ (preserved in the Bodlean Library 
in England and translated by Dr. Springer). 
The Arabian author says : " The wise men pre- 
vious to the flood, foreseeing an impending 
judgment from heaven, either by a submer- 
sion or by fire, which would destroy every 



* Jewish Antiquities. ' 69 



70 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

living thing, built on the tops of the mountains 
in upper Egypt many pyramids of stone in 
order to have some refuge against the impend- 
ing calamity. Two of those buildings ex- 
ceeded the rest in height, being four hundred 
cubits high and as many broad and long. 
They were built of large blocks of stone, 
and were so well put together that the joints 
were scarcely perceptible. And upon the exte- 
rior of the building every charm and wonder of 
physics (natural science ) was inscribed." 

To this another Arab writer adds, " Likewise 
the positions of the stars and their circles, to- 
gether with the history and chronicles of times 
past, of that which is to come, and of every 
future event." 

Another eminent Arabian author, cotempo- 
rary with the author of the " Arabian Nights," 
named Ibn Abd Alkokm, gave out what he 
claimed to be a translation from an old Egyptian 
papyrus, that " Shedded Ben Ad, the great an- 
tediluvian king of the earth, built the Great 
Pyramid, and lodged within it divers celestial 
spheres and stars and what they severally oper- 
ate in their aspects; and the perfumes which 
are to be used in them, and the books which 
treat of these matters," together with "the 
mysteries of science, astronomy, geometry and 
physic." * 



* Quoted by P. Smyth. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 71 

Another of these Arabian romancers says, 
" It was constructed by Enoch to preserve the 
arts and sciences and other intelligence during 
the flood." 

Of course no reliance can be placed in these 
Arabian writings. "The only fact," says Ool, 
Howard Yyse, " which seems to be established 
by these Eastern writers is the opening of the 
Great Pyramid by Al Mamoun in the ninth cen- 
tury." 

Some have thought that they were built as 
barricades against the sands of the desert 
sweeping over the low lands of Egypt, though 
a wall would have at once suggested itself for 
such a purpose. 

The more general theory, both anciently and 
at present, is that the Pyramids were built for 
royal tombs, the Great Pyramid for King Ghufa 
— called Cheops. 

This was the name of the king supposed to 
have reigned over Egypt when the Great Pyra- 
mid was built. But Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, 
one of the highest authorities in Egyptology, 
says in his Guide Book to Egypt, "It may be 
doubted whether the body of the king was de- 
posited in the sarcophagus ; " while M. St. John 
does not consider the stone chest or coffer 
found in what is called the King's Chamber a 
sarcophagus at all, and holds that the building 
was never meant for a tomb. The idea of the 
Great Pyramid having been erected as a tomb 



72 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



for Cheops grew out of a misunderstauding of 
the language of Herodotus. 

This charming narrator visited Egypt about 
445 B. 0. He made personal examination of the 
outside of the Pyramid, and then wrote down 
the statement of the Egyptian priest given to 
him through an interpreter. It is as follows : 

"Now they told me that to the reign of 
Rhampsinitus there was a perfect distribution of 
justice, and that all Egypt was in a high state of 
prosperity; but that after him Cheops, coming to 
reign over them, plunged into every kind of 
wickedness ; for that, having shut up all the tem- 
pleSjhe first of all forbade them to offer sacrifice, 
and afterward he ordered all the Egyptians to 
work for himself; some, accordingly were ap- 
pointed to draw stones from the quarries in the 
Arabian mountains down to the Nile, others he 
ordered to receive the stones when transported 
in vessels across the river, and to drag them to 
the mountain called the Libyan ; and they 
worked to the number of a hundred thousand 
men at a time, each party during three months. 
The time during which the people were thus 
harassed by toil lasted ten years on the road 
which they constructed, along which they drew 
the stones, a work, in my opinion, not much less 
than the pyramid ; for its length is five stades, 
and its width ten orgyge, and its height where it 
is the highest, eight orgyae ; and it is of pol- 
ished stone, with figures carved on it: on this 
road, then, ten years were expended, and in 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 73 



forming the subterraneous a])artinents on the 
hill, on which the Pyramids stand, which he had 
made as a burial vault for himself, in an island, 
formed by draining a canal from the Mle. 
Twenty years were spent in erecting the Pyramid 
itself: of this, which is square, each face is eight 
plethra, and the height is the same ; it is com- 
posed of polished stones, and jointed with the 
greatest exactness : none of the stones are less 
than thirty feet." * 

That Plerodotus was imposed upon by this 
priest, or misled by the interpreter, is certain, 
as there are no stones in the building measur- 
ing that length. 

But that Ohufa (or Cheops) was not buried in 
the Pyramid, even according to the priest's 
statemeilt to Herodotus, is evident from the 
words " a burial vault for Jmtiself in an idand 
formed by draining a canal from the Nile." 
Just such an island or locality built for a tomb, 
and with precisely the required hydraulic condi- 
tions, has recently been discovered one thou- 
sand feet from the Great Pyramid. 

"The structure there found, and still to be 
seen, descended into, and measured, though 
much defiled by the 26th and later Dynasties of 
ancient Egypt in its decline, — is a colossally 
large and deep burial pit, on the square and 
level bottom of which rests an antique, rude 



* Herodotus, B. 11, p 144-5, Carey's Translation, 

6 



74 THE GREA T P YRAMID. 

sarcophagus of very gigantic proportions. But 
deep as is the pit containing it, it is surrounded 
by a grand rectangular trench which goes down 
deeper still, cut clearly in solid lime-stone rock 
the whole of the way down ; and to such a 
depth does it reach at last as to descend below 
the level of the adjacent waters of the Mle at 
inundation time. Then, as the waters of that 
river necessarily percolate the hygroscopic rock 
of the hill up to their own level, the lower 
depths of the trench are filled with Nile water, 
and the grand old sarcophagus of the interior 
pit does then rest in a manner on an island sur- 
rounded by the waters of the Nile, exactly as 
Herodotus described ;— and it is the only known 
tomb on the Jeezeh hill which is gifted with 
that peculiarity or privilege." * 

This explanation of the words of Herodotus 
in regard to the place in which King Cheops 
was buried, together with the fact that the sttone 
chest was found lidless in a room not closed up, 
and in which no mummy was ever found, has led 
men who have given their lives to the study of 
Egyptian history and monuments, to abandon 
the theory of the Pyramid being built for a 
tomb. M. Jomard, in his celebrated " Descrip- 
tion de VJSgypte, '^ after having studied all the 
features and aspects, with all the forms of old 
tombs and pyramids before him, wrote concern- 



See Piazzi Smyth's "Great Pyramid," p. 130. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



ing this great one, "Everything is mysterious. 
I repeat it, in the construction and distribution 
of this monument, with its passages — oblique, 
horizontal, sharply bent, and of such different 
dimensions. We are not at all enlightened 
either upon the origin or the eoiployment, the 
utility, or any motive whatever for the Grand 
Gallery and various passages." 

There are no evidences that it was built for a 
tomb. There are no evidences worth naming 
that any one was ever buried in it. There are 
evidences that Cheops was buried as Herodotus 
describes, in an artificial island circled by the 
waters of the Nile. * For what then was the 
Great Pyramid built % 

A popular encyclopedia published by Messrs. 
Appleton & Co. states in a somewhat confused 
way that a mummy was found in the Great Pyr- 
amid. There is not a shred of proof of this. 
Col. Yyse found a mummy in Vql^ third pyramid 
/ — in the underground chamber — but nothing of 
the kind was found in the Great Pyramid of 
Gizeh. 

"Be this as it may,'^ says Mr. Proctor, "it is 
certain that the pyramids were constructed for 
\j- astronomical observation." And yet only when 
it was half finished, as this astronomer acknowl- 
edges, could it be of any avail for astronomical 
observation. 



* Contemporary Review^ Sept., 1879. 



76 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



It was not a temple of worship. The massive 
pile is solid — except those passages leading to 
two small rooms, and these passages were 
blocked up seemingly for a design then far in 
the future. 

It was the product of a civilization which the 
skeptic Eenan admits had no infancy. It was 
built in a land which, this same skeptic admits, 
" never had a great poet, artist, savant or philos- 
opher" — a land whose astronomy, says Brugsch 
Bey,* "was*based on empiricism, not on that 
mathematical science which calculates the move- 
ments of the stars." And yet there it stands, 
the mighty proof of the highest astronomical 
and mathematical knowledge to which mankind 
has ever attained. 

What was it hailt for^ and who were its hnild 
ers f 

We shall be better prepared to answer after 
we have explored its inner passages. 



* History of Egypt, vo]. 1, p. 181. 



THE GREA T P YRA MID. 77 



THE LINK THAT BINDS. 



"Dwelling like greatest things alone, 

Nearest to Heaven of earthly buildings, thou 

Dost lift thine ancient brow 

In all the grandeur of immortal stone, 

And, like the Centuries' beacon, stand, 

Up-springing as a tongue of fire 

To light the course of Time through Egypt's mystic land. 

' Tis not for poets to inquire 

Why thou wast built and When ? 

Whether, in monumental state, 

So great thyself to tomb the great 

Beyond their fellow-men ? 

Or dost thou, in thy bodily magnitude, 

Not uninformed nor rude, 

Declare the abstract ties which Science finds, 

Seen by the light of geometric minds. 

On fixed proportions, each allied to each ? 

Or dost thou still, in inferential speech. 

Reveal unto mankind the girth 

Of the vastly rounded earth ; 

And to the busy human race 

Bequeath a rule, to guide the range 

Of all the minor measurements of Space, 

Which Traffic gets, and gives, in endless interchange. 

Enduring pile ! Thou art the link that binds 

The memory of reflective minds — 

Vast mass of monumental rock sublime. 

That to the present Age dost join the Youth of Time." 



PART II 



The Historic and Prophetic 

Apocalypse 

Of the Great Pyramid. 




JHi^iL^^luM^^^isA-M^:!.j^a^k 



ijiltd>^'^ 



i.>N)iii»X.:: 



ia^iiK^ii.,i^iii^ 



LikBUuMlilMijttiKL^ 




PART 11. 




CHAPTER I. 

THE ENTRANCE FORCED. 

ND there stood the gio^antic pile with 

unrecorded date, looking down upon the 

ruins of all contem])orary monuments, 

steadfast upon its rocky hill— itself a mountain 

of stone, with all its avenues closed — the wonder 

and the mystery of the ages. 

Abraham had gazed upon it in all its pristine 
glory. It was known to the patriarchs and to 
the children of Israel. Centuries swej)t by it. 
The storms of ages beat against it, and mighty 
armies battled for universal empire about its 
base. Herodotus, the first to write human 
history, gazed with amazement on its vast 
dimensions and lofty height. Strabo, the 
Grecian philosopher, beheld its polished sides 
when the casing stones made them a mirror 
that flung back the sun^s radiance on the green 
fields of Egypt — beheld in wrapt awe, declaring 

" IT WAS NOT ERECTED BY MAN'S TOIL, BUT 
DESCENDED UPON ITS SITE READY FORMED 

FROM HEAVEN." 

81 



82 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



Tiirougii all the ages this witness, from ike 
dead past to the living present, was silent — 
made no sign that men could interpret. 

The ages moved slowly by. The sand storms 
swept around its rocky base. Generations 
after generations rose and gazed and passed 
away. The Greek and the Eoman and the 
Arab claimed, in turn, to be its owner. It out- 
lived them all, and held its secret until the ful- 
ness of its time had come. 

At length in the year of our Lord 825, Al 
Mamoun, a successor of Mahomet, head of 
the Arabian Empire when it had touched the 
zenith of its glory, resolved to drag forth the 
Pyramid^s secrets or its treasures into the light. 

He had been told by the romancers and for- 
tune tellers of Bl Fostat — the old Cairo — that 
gold and gems and untold wealth of antedi- 
luvian kings were stored in its hidden depths. 
Secrets too — magic charms, and the wisdom of 
the golden ages — were treasured in its vast 
vaults. 

Al Mamoun set about the task with the en- 
thusiasm of a fanatic and the cupidity of an am- 
bitious ruler. Relays of workmen inspired by 
the promises of rich rewards, began to dig into 
the north side of the Pyramid, just about the 
same distance from the northeast corner that 
the real but hidden entrance was, but some 
forty feet below this. The workmen toiled day 
and night, week after week even into months, 
breaking into the solid stone work and blasting 



THE GREAT PYRAMID, 83 



iu tlie best way ^ey knew how in that age. 
Weeks and even months of constant toil gave 
thein no encouragement of piercing the sup- 
posed interior hollow where the vast treasures 
were stored. One hundred feet had been 
blasted or bored into the stone work, as hard 
and unyielding as the rocky hillside. 

Murmurs arose among the workmen. The 
command was to dig on. The murmurs of the 
weary workmen were about to break forth in 
open refusal and revolt, when an incident oc- 
curred of a significant character. The sound 
of a falling stone revealed a hollow spot next 
to them. It was announced by the workmen 
with a shout of cheer. The labors became 
more hearty. Blows fell quick and heavy, and 
soon they burst into a " dark hollow place." It 
was the descending passage seen in the accom- 
panying engraving. It begins fifty feet above 
the ground, and twenty-four feet east of the 
center of the northern face of the Pyramid. 
The Arabs cautiously entered it. They moved 
up its smooth floor to the entrance, which was 
filled up either with the original plugs or with 
broken pieces of the casing stones. Driving- 
out the rock that hid up the mouth of this en- 
trance passage, the sunlight swept down to 
where the sound of the falling stone had been 
heard. This was a large stone which fitted into 
the ceiltng with angular shaping, while the face 
side was smooth and polished and not to be 
distinguished from the other stones of which 



84 



THE GREA7 PYRAMID. 








'1)1;— X>A.).fyiiiil! ''■^' 



FRONT ELEVATrON. J&^Z^iTz^ iV7?i^t. 

OF, THE ftNGLE STONES and PRESENTtr PUAPIDATEO MASONRY. 
RVER.THE OHEAHD SOLE ORICINAUENTRA-NCE PASSAGE INTO THE SAEAT PYRAMID. 

_2r^m. a. "photograph':^ P;s'/ 



the ceiling was composed. It liad been there, 
undisturbed since the Pyramid was built. 
Even if (as is supposed) the descending passage 
had been entered by its proper mouth or open- 
ing in past ages and then this mouth closed up, 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. ^^ 

this stone had never been removed until it was 
shaken from its position by the blows of Arab 
hammers. 

And now the secret was laid bare. Behind 
this displaced stone was the evidence of an- 
other passage, beginning in the ceiling of this 
descending one, which slants down over three 
hundred feet, ending in a vault, or chamber, 
which is directly under the Pyramid, a hundred 
feet down in the solid rock. 

But the fall of the stone in the ceiling of this 
descending passage revealed another passage. 
But its mouth was stopped up with great gran- 
ite plugs wedged in by the pressure of the 
stones above, and of such hard material that it 
was impossible either to shatter or move them. 
They are there yet. When visiting the Pyra- 
mid, one has to climb round or over them 
through an opening cut in the softer limestone 
that surrounds these granite wedges which jam 
up the entrance to this upward passage. Dig- 
ging their way, the Arabs found the passage, 
back of the barred entrance, filled up with 
blocks of limestone. Shattering these with 
their hammers and lifting them out, others 
would slide down — another and another — the 
whole passage, four feet high and three feet 
wide, filled with blocks of stone nearly as high 
as the passage itself. Desperate and continued 
efforts at length removed the last stone. The 
way was now cleared. The Arabs leaped into 
this passage, lit up by their glaring torches. 



S6 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

'''' Alia Acbar V was shouted aloud, — the first 
sounds and the first foot-falls within those mys- 
terious chambers for three thousand years. All 
had been blocked up, sealed, hidden from hu- 
man curiosity since the completion of the mas- 
sive pile. These stones must have been placed 
both in the opening of this ascending passage 
and all up its way when that part of the Pyramid 
was built. It is impossible that these granite 
plugs wedged into the lower end of this pass- 
age, or the loose stones that filled it all the way 
up, could have been put there after the Pyramid 
was comj)leted. 

But the way clear, the Arabs, wild with joy, 
rushed up with bent forms along this four-foot 
high passage. It soon opened into another one 
seven times its height, and six feet broad. It was 
a noble room, with polished marble sides and 
floor, equal to the finest cabinet work in joint- 
ings and finish. Ttiirty-six great granite blocks 
span the roof, and seven courses of over-lapping 
marble slabs form its shining walls. Upright 
stones bank the sides near the floor, like our 
wash-boards, in which are found twenty- eigbt 
holes at equal distances from each other and 
above each other. In each of these holes, ex- 
cept the two near the north end and the one in 
the stone step at the extreme south end, there 
is set in the wall a vertical stone thirteen inches 
broad and eighteen high. 

The Arabs paused, awe-struck, within this 
lofty, solemn and mysterious corridor. Their 



THE GREA T P YRAMID. 



torches could not light up its granite-spanned 
roof, which appeared twice its real height. 
Here they expected to find the earnestly-sought 
treasure, but all was empty, and devoid of any 
sign or hieroglyphic. 




The first entry by the Arabs in ihe year 825. 



On ! on ! '-^Alla Achar! " rang out and echoed 
and re-echoed throughout the length of this 
wonderful passage. And upward rushed the 
almost frantic Arabs until they encountered a 
step, climbing up which they pressed on until 



88 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



met by an impending wall, which suddenly comes 
down at the south end of the passage and which 
leaves a narrow one beyond it through which 
they groped with bended posture uutil they 
reached an ante-room, in which is a "granite 
leaf," as it has been called, and a peculiar 
protuberance known as tlie granite "boss." 
From this they make their way through another 
low passage overhung by a kind of portcullis — 
a great granite block resting in grooves, and 
then with a bound and a shout they stand in a 
beautiful room now called the King's Chamber, 
and gaze about them in wonder and disappoint- 
ment, for this splendid granite room, with its 
sides polished like the finest jewelry, is empty 
— treasureless — nothing in it but a great granite 
chest, hollowed out from a solid rock — lidless, 
empty, and without a mark or hieroglyphic. 

Ko mummy nor sign of mummy is found in 
this so-called " sarcophagus," not an inscription 
on its sides. IsTot an idolatrous emblem or sym- 
bol is traced on the walls of the noble chamber 
where it rests. Air channels ventilate the room. 
The immediate entrance to it is oi)en. The 
granite chest, or coffer, is not built round or 
closed in. Nothing suggests a cof&n, or tomb. 
Ko treasures were found in this " sanctuary," 
for which seemingly the whole mighty fabric 
was reared. All is silence, emptiness, mystery. 
""Alia AcbarP^ again shout the disappointed 
Arabs, whose work is done, and whose hopes 
are quenched. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 89 

Oue great fact in regard to the room and its 
contents is notable. This stone chest or coffer 
is the size of the ark or chest which God com- 
manded Moses to make and place in it the tab- 
lets of the law, the pot of manna, and Aaron's 
rod that budded — the ark of the covenant, bear- 
ing which on their shoulders the priests entered 
the swollen Jordan and i1 s waters divided 30 that 
Israel might pass over dry-shod — the ark, above 
which was the mercy-seat and the cherubim and 
the glory of the Shekinah — the ark which typi- 
fied the Lord Christ. The stone chest or " cof- 
fer" found by these intruders into those here- 
tofore sacred and secret chambers was of the 
dimensions of the Ark of the Loed, as will 
be fully shown farther on. 

But to return. The Arabs on entering the long 
corridor twenty-eight feet high and six feet wide 
had passed a passage the height of the one that 
led to it — only four feet. It was horizontal and 
conducted to a room now called the " Queen's 
Chamber." This they explored and found en- 
tirely empty — with that peculiar niche sunk in 
the wall showing the sacred cubit, which has 
already been described. Near the entrance to 
this horizontal passage is a chasm caused by 
the absence in this place (or by the tearing 
away) of one of the bank stones which stand in 
ranks all up the long corridor. From this hole 
or chasm a deep channel runs down, ragged and 
indirect, one hundred and forty feet and meets 
7 



90 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

the descending entrance-passage very near the 
subterranean vault. 

And now the inmost and hitherto secret cham- 
bers of this mysterious mountain of stone had 
been pierced. All was black as night — empty, 
unlettered, unmeaning. Al Mamoun and his 
viziers and soldiers stood thunderstruck. 

Murmurs were again heard. The Com- 
mander of the Faithful was endangered. He 
met the doubts and demoralization of his faith- 
ful followers by burying a certain amount of 
gold in some part of the Pyramid. The next 
day he ordered his soldiers to dig at this very 
spot. They immediately came to the treasure. 
" Let it be counted ! " was the caliph's order. 
It was carefully counted when " Lo ! it amount- 
ed to the exact sum that had been spent in 
the undertaking — neither more nor less. The 
caliph was astonished and said he could not un- 
derstand how the kings of the Pyramid could 
know exactly how much money he would have 
to expend in work, and he was lost in suprise." 

The Arabian poets celebrated his achievement 
and embellished the story with fables. They 
gave out that the coffer or stone chest was full 
of gold, and that a dead man with a breast plate 
of gold was found in it ; all of which are to 
be classed with the tales of the " Arabian 
Mghts." 

But the interior of this " wonder of the ages " 
was now open for the first time to all men. 

And "men did occasionally enter it," says 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 91 

one of the most reliable historians of the period, 
" for many years, and descended by the slippery 
passage which is in it." 

But it remained still as barren and meaning- 
less as the desert on whose border it stood. 
For centuries it was voiceless. 

At length in 1637 Professor John Greaves 
visited the Great Pyramid with a view to study 
its astronomical bearings and proportions. He 
was a professor of astronomy in Oxford Uni- 
versity. He measured the passages and cham- 
bers—but gave more attention to the outside 
than to the interior. In his published account 
of his visit and his explorations he pointed out 
" that Diodorus hath left, above 1,600 years 
since, a memorable passage concerning Ohem- 
mis (Cheops) the builder of the Great Pyramid, 
and Cephren (Shafre) the royal founder of the 
work adjoining. 'Although saith he (Diodorus) 
those kings intended these for their sepulchres, 
yet it happened that neither of them was buried 
there.^ " * 

Nearly two hundred years after this work of 
the old Oxford professor it was again taken up 
by the engineers and savants of Napoleon. 
Then came Ool. Yyse in 1837, expending his 
time and his fortune in exploration and admeas- 
urements. The general mind was to a great ex- 



* Greaves, quoted by P. Smyth, " Our Inheritance " 
p. 129. 



.92 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

tent awakened by his researches. The attention 
of Sir John Herschel was directed to this mem- 
oriai of lost science, and finally John Taylor, of 
London, wrote a work entitled " Y^hy was the 
Pyramid Built and Who Built It f '' 

He showed that the shape, the arrangements 
and other indications of the Great Pyramid 
proved that its architects possessed profound 
knowledge of the heavens and of the earth, 
which Egypt never possessed or even under- 
stood, nor any other nation, until a thousand 
years ago. This work by Taylor arrested the 
attention of one of the greatest men of this age 
— Piazzi Smyth, Eoyal astronomer for Scotland. 
He resolved, at his own expense to visit the 
Pyramid. He took with him twenty- seven 
boxes of instruments by which to make the 
most accurate observations and measure- 
ments. He was assisted by the Egyptian 
of&cials — with two ries or captains and twenty 
men from Sakkara to aid in clearing the Pyra- 
mid passages and removing obstructions. He 
measured and re-measured the interior passages 
and chambers (to which we now direct attention) 
with the most perfect mathematical instru- 
ments. He gave the results to the world in a 
splendid volume of nearly 700 pages — results 
which have never been impeached. From 
these we now proceed to show the sacred 
symbolisms of the Great Pyramid. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE DESCENDING PASSAGE — THE DKAGON 
STAR— THE DOWNWARD DRIFT. 




IT will be seen by looking at the chart of the 
Great Pyramid, that a long slant passage 
enters the north side of the structure and 
descends into an angular shaped room one 
hundred feet down in the solid rock. The 
ceiling of the subterranean room is "exquisitely 
smooth." But, as must be presumed, when the 
original workers had cut downwards from the 
ceiling to a depth of about four feet to the west 
and thirteen feet to the east they stopped. 

93 



04 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

They then bored a hole in the south end and 
left it unfinished. Then a portion of the bot- 
tom was excavated deeper than the other part, 
and this was also left incomplete. So that the 
lower part of this room was left in holes and 
hollows, and on this account has been called 
" bottomless." 

The downward passage to this floorless or 
" bottomless '^ underground chamber is 4,404 
inches* and is about four feet high and nearly 
as wide. 

This passage is directed to a point in the 
northern sky 3 ® 42' below the pole. It will be 
remembered that the Great Pyramid itself is as- 
tronomically oriented — its sides point due north, 
south, east, and west. But while |lie side of 
the structure in which this long descending 
passage is, points to the pole of the sky, the 
descending passage points to a spot three 
degrees and a fraction below it. Why was this f 

Col. Howard Yyse, concluding that this down- 
tunnel was built with some astronomical design, 
submitted to Sir John Herschel the question : 
" When did a star shine down that passage, and 
what was the star f " 

Looking up that long passage into the 
northern sky a star is seen. It is our present 
pole star in the constellation of the Little Bear. 
But that star was not always there. It, like all 



* According to the measurements of Col. Yyse. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



95 




THE DOWNWARD DRIFT. 



96 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

the other stars and galaxies, moves on in that 
grand celestial round called the precession of the 
equinoxes. IsTow by this " dial of the heavens," 
the location of any star at any period can be 
found. Sir John Herschel found that the star 
Alpha Draconis, when passing below the pole 
was 3 ^ 42' from the pole of the heavens 
about 2,170 years before Christ.* 

Kow here is 2^ fact in the construction of the 
Pyramid which, unless symbolical, is meaning- 
less. An underground floorless or bottomless 
pit, unfinished and unfit for any earthly prac- 
tical purpose ; a slanting passage-way leading 
to this subterranean chamber so built that along 
its whole descent the dragon star looked — 
built, too, not to point to the true north, but to 
this particular star when passing below the pole 
of the heavens. What could more clearly 
symbolize the terrible facts in human history 
or human destiny ! The progress of humanity, 
in all that is God-like, has been downward, ever 
downward. Every age and every people record 
this downward drift — the Descensus A verni. 
Boast as we may of the civilization and advance- 
ment of the race, the stern facts meet us all 
along the dark and crimsoned march of human- 



* Professor Proctor, while trying to overthrow the 
scientitic theory of the Great Pyramid says : " Sir John 
Herschel's correct statement that about the ye;)r 2170 B. 
0. the star Alpha Draconis was about 3 '^ 42' from the 
pole." — Contemporary Review. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 97 

ity, that in all that bears upon the eternal world, 
in all that relates to the claims of God over 
mind and conscience, in all that belongs to true 
morality, man's way has been downward from 
the very beginning. 

There is nothing more solidly established by 
science than that the earliest traditions taught 
this downward drift. According to the Egyp- 
tians the terrestial reign of Ra was the age of 
gold. This belief of an age of innocence and 
bliss by which the career of humanity be- 
gan is also to be met with among all peoples 
of Aryan or Japhetic race. The laws of Manu 
divide the duration of the human race into four 
ages : the age of perfection {Kritayuga) ; the 
age of three-fold sacrifice or the accomplish- 
ment of all religious duties ( Tretunga ) ; the 
age of doubt or obscuration of religious notions 
{Dvaparayuga) ; the age of perdition or {Kali- 
yuga) the present age which is to close in the 
destruction of the world. * 

Zoroastrian Mazdeism teaches the same 
theory. Time is divided into four ages. The 
first is all pure, like Eden. The good God 
Ahuramazda reigns over his creation in which, 
as yet, no evil has appeared. In the second 
age the evil spirit Angromainyus issues from 
the darkness. At first the evil spirit has com- 



* Franc ois Lenormant, in Conteniporary Review, Sept, 1, 
1870. 



98 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

paratively little power. Finally during historic 
times lie prevails, but his defeat is accomplished 
and the evil of this last age is to be followed by 
the resurrection of the dead and the beatitude 
of the risen just.* The laws of Manu say 
with this decline in religion and morality there 
is a steady decrease in the length of human 
life — in the proportion of 4, 3, 2, 1. And then 
the evil spirit is represented as the serpent, 
the dragon, who is the god of this world. 

The inspired record of the fall through the 
promptings of the old serpent is echoed in the 
scriptures of Zoroastrianism in these words: 
"I created the first and best of dwelling places 
( Eden ). I who am Ahuramazda ; the Airyana 
Vsedja is of excellent nature. But against it 
Angromainyus, the murderer, created a thing 
inimical, the serpent out of the river and the 
winter, the work of the Doevas ( demons.) " * 

This scourge caused by the power of the ser- 
pent drives men out of the best of dwelling 
places. 

These quotations are introduced to show that 
before the written word, before the inspired 
record of man^s fall and downward drift, Die 
facts were recorded in human memory and sym- 
bolized in these myths. 



* Theopompus, cited by the author of the "Treatise on 
Isis and Osiris." (Plutarch, C. 47). 
t " Yesht," 19- " Bundehesh," 23. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 99 

A cylinder of hard stone is preserved in the 
British Museum dug up from ruins in Assyria 
and of great antiquity, on which are seen the out- 
lines of a man and a woman seated opposite 
each other on either side of a tree from whose 
spreading branches two big fruits hang, one in 
front of each of the figures, who are stretching 
out their hands to gather it. A serpent is rear- 
ing himself up behind the woman. * 

"The existence of this tradition," says the 
author already quoted, '' in the cycle of the indig- 
enous legends of the Canaanites, seems to me 
placed beyond doubt, by a curious painted vase 
of Phenician workmanship of the seventh or 
sixth century before Christ, discovered by Gen- 
eral di Oesnola in one of the most ancient sep- 
ulchres of Idalia, in the Isle of Cyprus. There 
we see a leafy tree, from the branches of which 
hang two large clusters of fruit, while a great 
serpent is advancing with undulating move- 
ments towards the tree and rearing itself to 
seize hold of the fruit." 

And so the sacred books of Ancient India, 
like the poetry of Hesiod, show that it was by 
the law of decadence and deterioration that the 
ancient world believed itself so heavily laden. 
" In proportion as time passed and things de- 
parted further and further from their point of 
emanation, they corrupt themselves and grow 
worse and worse." 



* Lenormaiit, C. R., p. 54. 



100 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

Now, these traditions or beliefs, originating 
in the facts recorded in the Bible, and seen in 
an " evolution of decline " towards idolatry and 
barbarism, savagery and beastly degradation, 
could not be more clearly and strikingly sym- 
bolized in stone than they are in this downward 
passage along which the light of the dragon 
star gleamed, and which ended in the deep, 
dark, floorless pit. 

The existence of an evil principle, of a per- 
sonal and powerful agency controlling the race 
in this decadence, is embraced in universal tra- 
dition, is felt in universal experience, and is the 
only solution of the problem of evil. But the 
existence of this evil one is taught in God's 
inspired word. He is called the " Prince of the 
power of the air," ''the spirit that now worketh 
in the children of disobedience." He is called 
"the God of this world," and "the world lieth 
in the wicked one." He is called "the Drag- 
on," "the old serpent," and is declared to be a 
tempter, liar, murderer, destroyer, to whose 
usurped power men slavishly yield. Under his 
influence it is declared " evil men shall wax 
worse and worse." And that "as in the days of 
Noah, and in the days of Lot, so shall it be at 
the end of this age — in the days of the Son of 
Man." Then, and not till then, shall this dragon 
power " fall like lightning from the heavens and 
be given to the burning flame.'' 



OHAPTEE III. 

SACRED TIME MEASURES — FROM BABEL TO 

SINAI. 

} I \HIS downward passage, as has been de- 
1 scribed in the foregoing chapter, is met 
by another one running in the same south- 
ward direction, but upwards. It strikes the 
ceiling of the downward one, and is walled up 
with hard stone wedges, and was found filled up 
with large, loose stones. As the explorer goes 
down the slippery floor of the downward way, 
he notices these wedges are placed in the origi- 
nal entrance to this other and upward way. 
The Arabs, as already stated, cut away the softer 
side stones so as to get round and above these 
plugs. It is still reached by climbing up this 
"cut-off." 

By the measurements of Col. Vyse, * and the 
still more accurate measurements of Professor 
Smyth, it is found that the beginning of this 
ascending passage is 988 inches from the mouth 
of the long descending passage, and leads into 
a still higher and longer one. 



* The author has carefully examined and compared 
Howard Vyse's measurements with those of the Astrono- 
mer Royal. 

101 



102 THE GREAT PYRAMID, 



The question has been asked, "Why this 
seeming change in the plan of the Pyramid? 
Why this sudden turn in the entrance passage ? 
Why this difference in the interior from all the 
lesser and later pyramids % The main descend- 
ing passage was planned with astronomical pre- 
cision. It was leveled at the Dragon star. It 
entered the subterranean room a hundred feet 
directly under the Pyramid. What use was 
there for any other passages? Was the first 
plan abandoned and the lower room left unfin- 
ished, and this other passage built in the struc- 
ture to lead to chambers better suited to the 
object of the builders than the subterranean 
vault could be % 

These questions have been answered in the 
affirmative by rationalistic Egyptologists, but 
without a particle of proof. 

Dr. S. Birch, in a learned work on the " Dis- 
coveries in Egypt," conjectures why these sup- 
posed alterations were made. By comparing 
his language with the account obtained from the 
Egyptian priest through an interpreter, and re- 
corded by Herodotus, it will be seen that Dr. 
Birch has no information to impart except what 
we have already quoted from Plerodotus. After 
giving in substance what is related by that au- 
thor, he guesses why the lower vault was aban- 
doned, and this ascending passage made to lead 
into the interior chambers. 

The following is Dr. Birch's language : 

"It is by far the most remarkable of all the 



THE GREA T P Y RAM ID. 103 



pyramids, for several changes appear to have 
taken place during its construction. The first 
or nobler chamber appears to have been aban- 
doned in consequence of the prolongation of 
the passage extending beyond the base, the 
Pyramid having continued to be built for a 
longer time than originally contemplated. A sec- 
ond chamber, called the Queen^s, with a pointed 
roof, was then made in the masonry of the Pyr- 
amid 67 feet above the level of the base, and 
had a horizontal passage for 110 feet in the ma- 
sonry communicating with the original passage, 
sloping at an angle with it. Finally the King's 
Chamber, or main one, the last made with flat 
roof and fivjB chambers of construction placed 
above, the last triangular to lighten the weight 
of the masonry, was approached by the same 
passage as the Queen's Chamber, much en- 
larged and cased with red Syenitic granite, ter- 
minating in a horizontal passage with granite 
port-cullises, which were also to defend the 
entrance. This chamber was ventilated by 
two shafts, and had in the centre the plain but 
royal sarcophagus of the builder of the Pyra- 
mid. The stones of the chambers of construc- 
tion had still scrawled in red ochre upon them 
the name of Khrum Khufa, or Cheops, accom- 
panied by other marks which the masons had 
scrawled upon them in the quarries. * 



* Pa^e 113. 



104 THE GREA T P YRAMID. 

But over against these guesses stands the 
fact that matured plan marks every step in the 
progress and completion of the gigantic pile. 
Supposing that the underground vault was 
abandoned, and therefore left in its strange un- 
finished condition, the change would be de- 
cided on before the vast layers of masonic 
stone were piled one upon another to the 
height of fifty feet. But then the ascending 
passage, to take the place of the one cut down 
in the bed-rock, would have been commenced 
at once and so as to lead directly to the interior 
chamber, which on the supposition that it was de- 
cided to build it, after the underground vault was 
abandoned. But this was not done. The de- 
scending passage is built in the masonry up to 
fifty feet above the foundation. Its entrance 
is that number of feet from the original pave- ' 
ment. Why was this passage built up in the 
structure to this height if the plan of the sub- 
terranean vault had been abandoned ? It 
would not have been thus continued, but in- 
stead of it a passage would have been formed 
direct from the pavement into the interior 
chamber, which was to be reached (on this sup- 
position of a change in the plan) instead of the 
underground vault. The evidence is then, in 
the complete construction of the passages, 
that, the ascending passage, which starts out of 
the descending one was acccording to the origi- 
nal plan of these scientific architects. And 
then the question comes up, " Why f " There 



THE GREA T P YRAMID. 105 

is no conceivable reason for this downward and 
then this upward passage unless to symbolize 
some great facts or scrolls of human history. 

What facts, then, or scrolls of history, are of 
sufficient importance, or bear such relation to 
human destiny, as to be worth a record in 
changeless symbols in the " oldest and most 
gigantic of human works % " 

Was there a period in the history of the race 
marking an ascent from the downward drift 
of humanity to a knowledge of the moral law or 
to a knowledge of the true God % It will be 
answered by even the skeptic that such an 
event took place when the people of Israel 
passed from slavery and ignorance and idolatry 
to freedom, and written law and moral culture 
and the worship of the one holy God — when 
they left Egypt for Canaan. 

Whatever may be the doubts of men with 
regard to the miracles and the divine interposi- 
tion connected with the exodus of the Hebrews 
from Egypt, all acknowledge that it was an ad- 
vance and upward movement, and that it affect- 
ed the current of history for all time. Its 
effects, after nearly four thousand years have 
elapsed, are felt by every nation under heaven 
to-day. Was this world-crisis of sufficient im- 
portance to be symbolized by an ascent from 
the downward way leading to the confused, 
floorless and, as it is termed, " bottomless pit," 



106 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

adown wMch the eye of the Dragon Star 
gleamed ? 

Now let it be observed that this upward pas- 
sage is 988 inches from the beginning of the 
downward one — ^just about the number of years 
( so far as chronology can determine the exact 
number) intervening between the dispersion of 
the tribes of men at BabePs tower and the going 
up of Israel out of Egypt. 

That dispersion, with the confusion of tongues, 
is significant of universal world-history. 

" The account," says Lange, " of the building 
of the Tower of Babel may be regarded as the 
genesis of the history of the human race, striv- 
ing after a false unity ; of the doom of confusion 
that God, therefore, imposed upon it ; of the 
dispersion of the nations into all the world, and 
of the formation of heathendom as directly con- 
nected therewith." 

" Go to, let us build a tower for us, and make 
to ourselves A name." It was a Titanic, heaven- 
defying undertaking; and from it sprang the 
heathen fable of the war of giants against the 
gods. The very name Nimrod (which is in the first 
person plural) signifies '''' come let us'''' — rebel. 
" Its grammatical force shows that it had a pop- 
ular, instead of a family, origin. It was the 
watchword of the impious leader afterwards 
given to him by his applauding followers." But 
on the God-defying hosts fell the scattering and 
confounding blow. On the summit of all their 
defiant pride was written a sudden and strange 



THE GREAl PYRAMID. 107 

defeature. "A confounding of languages pre- 
supposes a confusion of consciousness in re- 
spect to God and the world. The history of the 
tower-builders is the history of the origin of 
heathenism." * 

Kow this downward course of man — ;just after 
the judgment of the deluge, and the rainbow, 
symbol of mercy — had its marked starting-point 
a^out one thousand years before the exodus of 
Israel from Egypt. The word "about" is here 
used because there is much of uncertainty in 
regard to historic dates. Bible chronology is 
based on the lives of the patriarchs rather than 
the occurrence of historic events. Hence the 
difficulties in forming correct chronological ta- 
bles, as will be seen from the following list : 

Authorities. DateofDeJuge 

Septuagint B. C, 3246. 

Samaritan - 2998. 

Jackson - 3170. . 

R. S. Pool •' 3129. 

W. Osburn (Monumental History of 

Eo^ypt) " 2500. 

Elliot's Horaz, Apocalipticas •' 2482. 

Browne^ s Ordo Sceeulorum " 2446. 

Playfair ■■ 2351. 

Usher - 2348. 

Petavius (Smith's Bible Die.) •• 2327. 

It is difficult to come to any conclusion 
when such a wide divergence is found in results 



* Fabri's "Origin of Heathendom," p. 39, 



108 THE GREA T P VRAM ID. 



whicli must have followed years of careful re- 
search by men fully competent to the task. 
What then is the best (or it may be said) only 
safe method to pursue when so many different 
dates of one event meet us f Let us take the 
mean (or average) of the whole, thus striking a 
balance between 3246 years and the lowest 
date. 2327. Now the mean or average date is 
2741, and strange to say the Pyramid's chrono- 
logical measurements symboUze this very num- 
ber. It is quite evident that the dispersion did 
not take place until about two hundred years 
after the flood. '' I make the beginning of 
idolatry, and the consequent dispersion, to have 
occurred about 200 years after the flood.* 
This would make the date of the dispersion 
(according to the average above given) 2541 
years before Christ. The exodus, by the more 
recent investigations, occurred over 1500 B. C 
!Now counting from the beginning of the en- 
trance passage to the beginning of the ascend- 
ing one, the inches bring out this very date (as 
we shall see). In other words, counting back 
from the ascending passage 988 inches, and 
taking these as an inch for a year, we find a 
number coming within a fraction of the date of 
that grand epoch — the confusion of tongues 
and the dispersion of the tribes. The last re- 
sults of chronological study make that date 
2541 years before Christ. The Pyramid meas- 



* Jones' "Hist. Church of God," p. 7. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 109 



uring makes it 2530 before Christ or 988 years 
before the exodus. 

A thousand inches (nearly) from the com- 
mencement of that downward way along which 
the Dragon Star shone, there is a sudden and 
marked ascent. This is the fact in the Pyra- 
mid to-day — utterly purposeless unless it was 
intended as a symbol. But here is the fact in 
the world-history. A thousand years (nearly) 
from the commencement of the downward 
drift of humanity under the influence of the 
Dragon — the serpent-devil — and there was an 
ascent. A portion of the downward drifting 
race was lifted up from the dehumanizing abomi- 
nations, the bestial idolatry, in which all the 
tribes of men gloried — were lifted by a mighty 
arm, by prodigy and miracle, by cloud and 
flame pillar — were called to hear the voice of 
the Eternal and receive his written law from 
the lightning-girt summit of Sinai, trembling be- 
fore the presence of the I AM. 

The fact that the Hebrew nation had drifted 
into abasing calf-worship, and bestial degrada- 
tion in their slavery to the worshipers of the 
ox, and the ape, and the crocodile, is denied 
by none. The fact that they were delivered 
from all this, to a purer and loftier plane of re- 
ligion and morals and manners, is nowhere de- 
nied. There stood Israel through succeeding 
centuries — the lighthouse in a world of gloom 
— rooted on the rock of truth, while the nations 



110 THE ORE A T P YRAMID. 



of the earth drifted on, on to darkness and per- 
dition. 

Standing by itself, with no other features or 
parallels, synchronizing important eras both as 
to beginnings and endings — from what they 
spring and to what they led — this apparent sym- 
bolism might seem far-fetched or fanciful. But 
when there are added to all this the mechanical 
data next to be noticed, the wonderful agree- 
ment of inches with years in movements of 
providential history fills us with conviction and 
awe. 

The conclusion is thus forced on the mind, 
that this epoch in the history of the race, 
the call of Israel from Egypt with all its bear- 
ings upon the religious thought, culture ana 
destiny of humanity, is memorialized both in re- 
gard to its date and continuance in this vast 
monument, '' a sign, and a witness to the Lord 
in the midst of the land of Egypt.^' 




CHAPTER IV. 

FROM EGYPT TO BETHLEHEM. 

'^K IKE hundred and eighty- eight inches from 
\ this descending passage, which leads to 
•• the subterranean pit, and down which the 
Dragon Star looked, is the ascending passage — 
the way of escape from the downward way. 
Mne hundred and eighty-eight years (or, in 
round numbers, one thousand years) after the 
dispersion, occurred the exodus from Egypt. 
This passage, accurately measured from the 
floor of the ascending one up to the ceiling and 
then along to where it ends in a still longer, 
higher and grander one, is just 1542 inches. 

It has been shown in the first part of this 
volume that an inch for a year, in the two longest 
lines in the Pj'ramid — the added diagonals — 
measure the great precessional cycle of 25,827 
years. It has been shown that from the begin- 
ning of the downward passage to the beginning 
of this ascending one is equal, an inch for a 
year, to the time from the dispersion to the time 
Israel left Egypt. And now here is another 
wonderful coincidence (as many term it), viz : the 
length of this ascending passage is equal, an 
inch for a year, to the time from the exodus 
from Egypt to the birth of Christ. 

Ill 



112 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

Uslier^s Chronology dates tke exodus 1491 
years before Christ. This, says the learned 
editor of Lange's Commentary, is usually set 
down in round numbers 1500 years. But that 
writer tells us that it was several years more 
than this. The Rev. W. B. Galloway, M, A., 
Vicar of St. Mark's, Regent's Park, London, in 
a work entitled " Egypt's Record of Time to ttie 
Exodus of Israel," makes the date of the ex- 
odus 1542 years before Christ.* Now the exact 
measure of this ascending passage from the 
floor of the downward one to where the long 
high corridor begins, is exactly 1542 inches.i 
The precise measure of the Jewish dispensa- 
tion is thus marked in clearest symbolism in the 
length of this ascent. 

But more than this : the passage itself, as has 
been shown, is blocked up with hard immovable 
granite wedges. Why % There was no appar- 
ent object for this. But as a symbol it corre- 
sponds with the Jewish dispensation. That 
people were not only lifted from the downward 
drift but were sealed. God chose them as His 
own "peculiar people." Ko one can be a Jew 
unless the blood of Abraham courses his veins. 
God separated them from the nations of the 
earth and distinguished them physically, men- 
tally and in all their characteristics from every 



* "Egypts Record," p. 371. He also proved that the 
birth of our Savior occurred, according to our reckoning, 
only within a fraction of the year B. C. 1. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 113 

other people under heaven. They have been 
supernaturally wedged in, nationally, as effectu- 
ally as that passage is literally. 

This itself is a living miracle. If a handful 
of water taken from one of our inland stream- 
lets were flung into the Mississippi and borne to 
the Gulf and across the Atlantic and swept 
through seas and oceans, by wind and wave 
round the earth, and yet every drop retained 
its own freshness and consistency, unchanged 
and unaltered by rushing currents or crushing 
waves, it would be no greater miracle than that 
Grod should have taken a handful of people out 
of Egypt and cast them upon the tides of hu- 
manity, to be scattered abroad over earth 
through centuries, and yet remain distinct from 
all other peoples — a Jew proud of his lineage 
and name wherever found or driven. How 
significantly is this symbolized by the blocking 
up with immovable granite rocks, the entrance 
to this 1542 inch passage ! 

Another peculiarity about this ascending 
passage is, that at its beginning, -and in other 
portions to be mentioned, the tunnel is cut 
through a huge block of stone, so that floor, 
walls and ceiling are formed by the one piece. 
The passage is nearly four feet high and three 
and a half feet wide, and passes through stone 
after stone, fitted closely together, through 
which the square passage-way has been cut. 
These plates at the entrance, cut clean through, 
extend to the length of 253 inches from the 



114 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



floor of the descending passage. Beyond this 
the walls, floor and ceiling are built, for some 
distance at least, with regularly jointed stones. 
Here then at the beginning this passage is hol- 
lowed out of great blocks of rock. Is there 
anything in the commencement of the Mosaic 
dispensation — which lasted in years the length 
of thig passage — which these plates of stone 
can symbolize ^ We know that God girded and 
sheltered Israel and bore them up with His 
providence and His mighty hand for centuries 
after they left Egypt. In the wilderness, under 
Joshua and the Theocracy, God was their 
strength and their rock of defense. What could 
more fittingly symbolize this than that this pas- 
sage at its beginning should be girded by the 
plates of stone so cut through, that floor, wall 
and ceiling should be of one unbroken piece t 
These plates are again found far up the passage, 
and answer in inches to the years of David and 
Solomon's reigns. Then another portion follows 
with jointed stones. But at that number of 
inches which corresponds to the years of Heze- 
kiah and other pious kings, these massive gird- 
ing plates form the way. And at the number of 
inch-es distant from the beginning of the pass- 
age, which equals the years when the voice of 
prophecy was silent — amounting to 400 years — 
there are none of those rock girders for 400 
inches up to the end of the passage. These may 
be only singular coincidences, but how wonder- 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 115 

ful that they should follow each other with 
pointed and almost speaking significance ! 

In addition to the distances that these pro- 
tecting plates are placed, marking an inch for a 
year, in Jewish history, it was found by the 
measurement of a competent civil engineer that 
the intervals of passage length at which these 
remarkable stone plates were introduced, were 
the breadths of the central room in the build- 
ing called the King's Chamber. This chamber 
in its breadth was the standard of measure in 
these significant safety plates, indicating that 
the more glorious periods in the Jewish dispen- 
sation, marked by massive bored rocks, were 
prophecies of a still more glorious period, when 
the ^''Mng shall reign in righteousness." 

In viewing this first ascending passage, we 
find these facts with their corresponding sym- 
bolisms. First, we have its beginning, 1000 
inches (nearly) from the beginning of the down^ 
ward passage, and the exodus of the Jews .from 
Egypt took place 1000 years nearly from the 
*' dispersion " at BabePs tower; then we have 
the blocked-up mouth, symbolizing the Jewish 
nation sealed and kept by the providence of 
God; and then we find these solid plates of 
stone answering, as we have shown, to the 
special blessings of God to that nation when it 
acknowledged His rule ; and then we find it end- 
ing at the close of 1542 inches, the length in 
years of the Jewish dispensation, or from the 
exodus to the birth of Christ, when it leads into 



116 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



a grand corridor or gallery of seven-fold its 
height. ^ 

Are not these facts significant % What shall 
we think of them % Meet them with a shrug of 
the shoulder or a scornful sneer % There stands 
the Pyramid with these shapings and construc- 
tions and measurements in themselves purpose- 
less, and there are the facts of history — tradi- 
tions the skeptic may call them — fitting into 
these measurements or symbols like the tongue 
and groove of a piece of refined mechanism. 
Does it not appear that these historic facts affect- 
ing human weal through time and eternity were 
stamped on this gigantic pile in that morning of 
humanity as a witness for God to men in this 
scof&ng, doubting age, " a sign and a witness to 
the Lord in the land of Egypt % " 




CHAPTER Y. 



THE GRAND CORRIDOR AND GOSPEL ERA — THE 
DISRUPTED ROCK, AND THE RESURRECTION 
OF JESUS. 




PIA2ZI SMYTH, del! 



The Missing Ramp-stone. 



hi- 



HE ascending passage, with all its wonder- 
I ful symbolism, ends 1542 inches from the 
floor of the downward one, in a lofty cor- 
ridor or gallery, twenty-eight feet high and a 

117 



118 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



little over six feet wide. As tlie visitor emerges 
from the first ascending way, in which he has to 
bend down, it being but four feet high, he feels, 
with the relief of an upright position, that he 
is in a room arranged with some noble de- 
sign. It is built of, or rather cased in with, pure 
marble. The joints are needle-proof, and though 
cemented can scarcely be seen. The roof, 
twenty-eight feet high, is spanned with thirty- 
six great granite blocks, between which plates 
of marble form the polished ceiling. All along 
the sides of this princely corridor are ranges of 
marble slabs overlapping so as to make the 
passage narrower at the floor than at the ceil- 
ing. No marble hall can be found on earth sur- 
passing it in beauty of finish or mechanical skill. 
Professor Greaves two hundred years ago 
described it as "a very stately piece of work, 
and not inferior either in respect of the curios- 
ity of art or richness of materials to the most 
sumptuous and magnificent buildings." "This 
gallery or corridor," continues the old Oxford 
professor, " or whatsoever else I may call it, is 
built of white and polished marble, the which is 
very evenly cut in spacious squares or tables. 
Of such materials as is the pavement such is 
the roof and such are the side walls that flank 
it. The coagmentation or knitting of the joints 
is so close that they are scarcely discernible to 
a curious eye. And that which adds grace to 
the whole structure, though it makes the pass- 
age the more slippery and difficult, is the accliv- 



THE GREA T P YE AMID. 119 

ity and rising of the ascent. The gallery is 
bounded on both sides with two banks like 
benches of sleek and polished stone. Upon 
the top of these benches, near the angle where 
they close and join the wall, are little spaces 
cut in right-angled parallel figures, set on each 
side opposite one another, intended, no question, 
for some oilier end than ornamentation.^^ 

" In the casting and ranging of the marbles in 
both the side walls there is one piece of archi- 
tecture in my judgment very graceful, and that 
is that all the courses or ranges, which are but 
seven, do set and flag over one another about 
three inches, the bottom of the uppermost 
course overflagging the top of the next, and so 
in order the rest as they descend." * 

Colonel Yyse, two hundred years after the 
foregoing was written, gave to the world a very 
similar description of the grand corridor, call- 
ing the bench, or bank stones, "ramps." Every 
visitor verifies these statements. There is that 
noble gallery, with those " stone benches," or 
^' ramps," opposite one another, '•'' intended^ no 
question^ for other purposes than ornamentation.^^ 

What could these "other purposes than orna- 
mentation " be ? 

Richard A. Proctor accounted for them, " a 
priori,'^^ as he termed it, as made for seats for 



* Greaves' Work, edited by Dr. Birch, 1737. 
f Contemporary Review, Yol, 1, No. 3, p. 39. 



120 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

star-gazers, who took their positions in this 
ascending grand gallery before the structure 
had been built up any higher. He imagined a 
quantity of water poured into the descending 
passage. This water would be a mirror just at 
the corner where the entrance is met by the 
ascending passage. *'Tho observer, sitting on 
those slanting benches, would look down the 
one passage and see Alpha Draconis by rays 
reflected in the water." 

A most scientific guess, assuredly. The 
astronomers sit on stone benches, which in- 
cline, facing each other, what for % They could 
have gone down into the passage which was lev- 
eled at Alpha Draconis and observe it to their 
hearts^ content. But instead of this they are to 
sit fronting each other and look down into a dish 
of water to see the star by reflection, and this 
when the star was Jcnown to be directly along 
the line of the ascending passage. To build 
this passage with all its elaborate finish for such 
a temporary and useless purpose would be 
ridiculous. And the credulity of the scientist 
who can believe that this was the purpose of 
these stone benches is marvelous. 

But let it be observed — 

1st, This grand corridor commences at the 
close of the 1542-inch gallery. That 1542-inch 
gallery agrees in its symbolism of length and 
construction with the length and peculiarities 
of the Mosaic dispensation. At the close of 
that dispensation the revelation of the Son of 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 121 



God from heaven took place — 1542 years after 
the exodus of Israel from Egypt. 

2d, This grand corridor is twenty-eight feet 
high, seven times the height of the 1542-inch 
ascending x)assage. Seven we know is the num- 
ber of 'perfection — as " seven spirits," " seven 
churches," "seven angels," " seven years," etc. 
The gospel dispensation was the perfection of 
Judaism. It is called "the glory that surpass- 
eth." Of the dispensation of the law it is writ- 
ten, " For even that which was made glorious 
had no glory in this respect by reason of the 
glory that excelleth." Glorious as is the 1542- 
inch ascending passage, with its massive tun- 
neled plates, it has no glory in this respect " by 
reason of the glory that excelleth" in this grand 
gallery. Seven, the number of perfection, 
marks its walls up to its termination, by the 
seven courses of over-lapping marble plates on 
each side from floor to ceding, as well as its 
seven-fold height. 

3d, Thirty-three inches from its beginning, 
where the first of those " stone benches " or 
"ramps " would be found, is a yawning hole, so 
formed that it should appear as though the ramp 
stone had been uprooted, or burst up and out 
from beneath. That it was thus driven out 
from beneath, or made to appear so, is evident 
from the fact that a portion of the adjoining 
stone has been torn away with it. 

The absence of this first "ramp stone" has 
9 



122 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

been accounted for in this way. The workmen 
having plugged up the ascending passage lead- 
ing to this grand corridor, had no way of escape 
but down this hole. They therefore, after fill- 
ing up the ascending passage with great stones, 
descended through this narrow, uneven way al- 
most down to the subterranean vault, and then 
up the long descending passage to the outlet. 
But would not these masterly architects and 
workmen have found it easier to have blocked 
up or filled with rocks that ascending passage 
as they were building upwards, especially as the 
hole must deform the otherwise symmetrical and 
highly finished corridor? But if they over- 
looked all this as the building progressed up- 
ward, how easy for such skilful workmen as 
the gallery shows them to have been, to fit a 
slab of stone over the way of escape and as 
the last man descended let it fall into its place, 
and thus preserve the completeness of the whole 
plan. 

In fact, if the plugs and great stones filling up 
the ascending passage were not put there be- 
fore the structure was built any higher, they 
could not have been put there at all. It would 
have been impossible for the workmen to fill in 
these great stones in the passage after it was 
built up to its full height. But if the wedges 
and great blocks of stone were put in the pas- 
sage as the work went on, then there was no 
occasion for the workmen to escape anywhere. 
In any view of the case the way, Col. Vyse and 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 123 



others account for this missiDg ramp stone and 
the yawning hole is unreasonable. 

No, there is no explanation of this missing 
stone — nor, indeed, of those still standing — un- 
less it be that it symbolized some great event. 

Now it is convincingly significant of this 
that just thirty-three pyramid inches from the 
beginning of this seven-fold corridor — thirty- 
three inches from the end of the 1542-inch pas- 
sag6 — occurs this disrupted " ramp stone,'^ as a 
part too, of the plan of the symmetrically con- 
structed apartment. 

There is the fact, unaccountable unless in- 
tended as a symbol. 

Then here is the historic fact that fits it. 
Thirty-three years from the birth of Jesus, an- 
nounced by the choral melody of the angels, 
He was crucified. His body laid in the stony 
crypt, where all earth's hopes lay buried with 
Him. But He could not be held in death's grasp. 
" He burst the marble jaws of death." He rose 
in triumph from the grave, and triumphantly 
placed above it the standard inscribed with 
His and His people's watchword — " I AM the 

RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE." 

Thirty-three years from Christ's birth in the 
stable was His resurrection from the tomb; 
Thirty-three inches from the beginning of the 
grand corridor is this chasm left open by the 
burst-up stone. The four-foot-high passage 
merges in the seven-fold one, up to this mouth 
of the chasm. For thirty-three inches it is 



124 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

lost in the corridor. Then comes this welFs 
mouth, where the stone has been driven out 
from beneath. After this the same four-foot- 
high ascending passage is traced again — emerg- 
ing at the left of the grand corridor, in a hor- 
izontal direction, into what is called the 
Queen's Chamber. And the Mosaic dispen- 
sation was merged in the dawn of the new 
dispensation while Jesus was on eaith, yet 
remained under the law. Thirty-three years 
from his birth, and the vail of the temple 
was rent in twain and the line of demarkation 
was drawn. If the four-foot-high passage — 
whose length, 1542 inches, measures the years 
of the Mosaic dispensation — symbolizes the 
Jewish people, then from the resurrection of 
Jesus the Christ they go on with no far- 
ther ascent until their destiny as a people 
shall be fulfilled. The horizontal passage 
will be noticed in the chart of the interior 
of the Pyramid. It will be observed that it 
strikes off in a straight line from the chasm or 
welFs mouth where the stone has been forced 
up. How perfect this symbolism ! Since the 
resurrection of Jesus, there has been no ad- 
vance in Judaism. The Jews were in numbers 
then just about what they number to-day. 
They had their Sadducees and Pharisees then, 
they have their orthodox and reformed Jews now 
— the latter ritualistic theists. Towards the end 
of this four-foot-high horizontal passage — 
whose height and breadth are the same as the 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 125 

first ascending passage — the floor is lower. That 
lowest section is just one-seventh of the whole 
length, marking one peculiarity of the Jews — 
their adherence, nominally at least, to the sev- 
enth day, and perhaps indicating also the 
people's lower religious plane, as the years go 
on. 

Then comes the so-called Queen's Chamber. 
Two air tubes have been discovered in it. They 
had been covered in by the builders, as though 
intended to symbolize the blindness of that 
people. These air passages have not been traced 
to the exterior and may symbolize something in 
their history not yet understood at this date. 

This was the chamber of sevens. Its two- 
sided ceiling added to its floor and four walls, 
makes it a seven-sided room, with other sevens 
indicated in its measurements. This chamber 
doubtless symbolizes a future of restoration and 
glory to that people whom God ennobled and 
called up from the degrading idolatry of 
Egypt, and whom he sealed and has kept 
through all the mutations of centuries for some 
future privileges and blessings. 

From this disrupted ramp stone, just thirty- 
three inches from the beginning of the corridor, 
and from which starts out the continuation of 
the 1542-inch-long passage, begin the ranks of 
stone-like benches opposite each other all the 
way up the sides of this avenue. 

Each one of these — as noticed by Professor 
Greaves two hundred years ago, and again by 



126 THE GREA T P YRAMID. 

Col. Vyse in 1837, and fully described with 
their measurements by Professor Smyth, and to 
be seen by all who visit the Pyramid — has 
lateral holes cut "near the angle where they 
close and join tbe wall." These, as the old Ox- 
ford professor said, " were intended for some other 
end than ornamentation^ 

They must have been intended as symbols — 
to teach something. But what do these spaces 
cut in these " stone benches " resemble, but 
graves — the end and rest of all living? Each 
of these stones ( except the two lower and up- 
per ones) is marked by a piece of stone 
about thirteen inches broad and eighteen inches 
high, let into the wall uprightly.* 

As nothing could better symbolize in stone 
the rest of the grave than those side-long holes, 
cut at intervals in the stone benches or ramps 
so nothing could better symbolize in stone the 
resurrection from the grave, than these up- 
right stones let into the wall above them. 

The resurrection of Christ is the central and 
crowning doctrine of the gospel. " If Jesus be 
not raised your faith is vain, ye are yet in your 
sins," " then they also who are fallen asleep in 
Christ are perished." f It was the most import- 
ant event in the annals of the universe. If that 
"oldest and most gigantic work of human 
hands " was built'for no other end than to sym. 



* Siny til's*' Our lnbeiitance," etc., p. 453. 
t 1 Cor. 15 : 17, 18. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 127 

bolize this one occurrence, it would have been 
worthy of all the skill, science, labor and ex- 
l»ense lavished upon the mighty structure. It 
is evidently symbolized there in this grand cor- 
ridor, just thirty-three inches from the termin- 
ation of the passage which fitly symbolizes the 
Jewish dispensation. And then from this sym- 
bol of the grave and resurrection, commence 
these side-long holes — these little grooves, 
backed by the upright stones indicating a 
rising up. Christ's resurrection is the spring 
and the pledge of the resurrection of His peo- 
ple. "Because He lives we shall live also." 
" He hath begotten us again unto a lively hope 
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
dead."* This livelii or living hope of our res- 
urrection springing from His, is the light that 
shines all along the ranks of God's struggling 
hosts. " For if we believe that Jesus died and 
rose again, even them also which sleep in Jesus 
will God bring with him." f And so Paul con- 
sidered the whole gospel bound up in this, when 
he said in his defense before Agrippa, " of the 
hope of the resurrection of the dead I am called 
in question."! 

To quench this hope, to undermine this doc- 
trine, rationalists and skeptics and false pro- 
fessors direct their most ingenious efforts and 



* I P.ter r 5. 
t I Thess. 4 : 14. 

X Acts 23 : 6. 



128 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



aim their heaviest blows. It is assailed by phil- 
ologists, and physiologists, and biologists, and 
scientists of every form and grade, while it is 
let alone, if not denied by a sensational or per- 
functory ministry. But there stands this found- 
ation-doctrine, this glorious hope, in towering 
prominence in God's Word; and there stands the 
symbol of this foundation doctrine, this glorious 
hope, in towering prominence in the Pyramid — 
in this seven-fold gallery. The upright stones 
lie back of, and rise above the ramp stones — 
the resurrection hope over the gloom of the 
grave. 

And yet even physiology and biology show 
that the waste, or loss or change of the particles 
of matter composing our bodies, has nothing to 
do with corporeal manhood. Each one of us is 
the same man, the same woman, though now 
possessing no particle of the matter in his or 
her body which composed it a few years ago. 
These particles, the whole materials which 
made up our bodies a few years since, have gone 
into other organisms — are scattered to the four 
winds — yet we are the same men and women we 
were before these mutations. And what if in 
the resurrection there is not found one particle 
of the matter which composed our bodies when 
we died ? Will this in any way affect the reality 
of our identical manhood ? 

The dead shall be raised at the coming of our 
Lord, and we who are left over and are alive at 
His coming shall be changed, and so shall we be 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 129 

forever witli the Lord. This is the completion 
of that perfection of Judaism — the end of our 
salvation. 

Then as the corridor is seven times the height 
of the 1542-inch gallery which precedes it — the 
symbol of perfection — and as sevens are marked 
all up its sides in the seven over-lapping ranges 
of marble plates, so there are four times seven of 
these little graves cut in the top of the bench 
stones, or " ramps." Four we know is the sign 
of completion. The four living creatures in 
Ezekiel's vision and also in the Apocalypse de- 
note the complete number of the saved ones. 
The terrible and continuous wrath visited upon 
the Jews is called four sure judgments on 
Jerusalem. The impious world-power is figured 
as four beasts. And so we read of four angels 
who sound their trumpets as symbolizing the 
completion of Earth's woes.* And so, also, the 
white, the red, the black and the pale horses — 
four, symbolizing the calamities which precede 
the opening of the fifth seal. 

Here then is evidence, without any straining, 
that the number four stands for completion, as 
seven does for perfection. And so the grand 
gallery, or corridor, is four times seven. It has 
seven over-lapping stone courses all along its 
sides up to four times seven feet in height, and 
it has four times seven of these graves cut in 



* Eev. 8:78. 



130 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

its four times ^ecen beiicli or ramp stones, with 
the upright stones rising over them. Could 
these stones preach more plainly — could these 
truths be more impressedly engraved in monu- 
mental marble % Four times seven meet us at 
every point in the splendid corridor, like signa- 
tures of the divine hand that His work is per- 
fect, His plans complete, and testifying to the 
completeness of His perfect work, when the 
blessed dead who die in the Lord " shall live 
and reign with Christ on earth a thousand 
years.'' ^^ This is the first resurrection.^^ * 

How that grand gallery witnesses unto the 
Lord! All along its ceiling are great granite 
blocks binding and sheltering it. They are 
thirty-six in number — equal to the months in 
the public and vicarious ministry of Jesus. 
These thirty-six protecting granite blocks — the 
beams of this mysterious chamber — harmonize 
in number with its cubic contents. The gallery 
contains, by the most exact calculations, thirty- 
six millions of cubic inches, being one million 
for each one of the thirty-six roof-stones. The 
measure of the Holy City, which John saw com- 
ing down from heaven : which with four square 
was "twelve times twelve thousand furlongs," f 
that is, 144,000. This was also the number 
of those John saw standing with the Lamb on 



* Rev., 20. 

f Vatican Manuscript. Rev. 7 : 4. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 131 



Mount Zioii — 144,000. I^Tow this measure of the 
Celestial City, 144,000 furlongs, brought over in 
cubits (250 cubits in a furlong), make thirty-six 
million cubits. The symbolized measure of the 
Holy City is therefore given in the Apocalypse, 
36,000,000 cubits ; and the contents of this grand 
gallery are 36,000,000 inches. 

" JSverytJiing is mysterious^^'' wrote the French 
Academician years ago ; " I repeat it, every- 
thing is mysterious in the construction and dis- 
tribution of this monument — the passages, ob- 
lique, horizontal, sharply bent, of different di- 
mensions. We are not at all enlightened," he 
continues, " either upon the origin, or the em- 
ployment, the utility, or any motive/or the grand 
gallery or its various passagesJ^ 

Yet this most elaborate and closely-calculated 
design is stamped upon all adjustments and pro- 
portions of the Pyramid. It is now acknowl-' 
edged by all thinking men that it was built foi^'^ 
astronomical observations, or memorializations."^ 
It stands on the line of 30 ° latitude. It is placed 
in the center o^ the habitable land distribution 
of the earth. It has such angles, such height 
and such breadth of base as practically to solve 
the most profound problems in mathematics and 
astronomy. Could it be that the architects who 
planned on such scientific principles the vast 
structure, would form the grand gallery, with all 
its skilful workmanship, all its elaborate finish, 
all its harmonious arrangements, with no pur- 



132 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

pose, no object in view as to ^Ht8 employmtnt^ 
utility or any motive f " 

In all else but its symbolization it is useless 
and worthless and meaningless. On^y as a par- 
able in stone could its wise, scientific architects 
have planned it. Its symbolism once admitted 
and it becomes a volume whose leaves of pol- 
ished stone testify for God to this drifting infi- 
del age — testify to the glorious plan of the 
redemption of a ruined world. 






■i 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE GOSPEL SYMBOLISM OF THE GRAND COR- 
RIDOR — A PARABLE IN STONE. 

WE have seen that thirty-three inches 
from the north wall or beginning of the 
grand gallery is the yawning chasm, or 
mouth of "a strange well,'^ where the ramp 
stone has been burst up from beneath. This so- 
called well, or souterraiti, as it is also termed, 
runs down through the masonry and through 
the original rock (which in this place was left 
I standing and forms a part of the structure). 
! Nearly half way down it expands into a bowl- 
■ shaped grotto. It continues its ragged and 
. Jrregular course till it meets the main descend- 
ing passage very near to the subterranean pit. 
■"V^a^The ascending passage from the main entrance, 
it will be remembered, was found blocked up so 
that the entrance by this path into the corridor 
was " enjoined." Yet that glorious gallery with 
all its significant symbolisms might be gained 
through this narrow and difficult way up through 
the broken-out stone thirty three inches from 
the gallery's north wall. Whatever this was 
intended to indicate, one thing is certain, that 
not through the Law nor through the Mosaic dis- 
pensation, its covenants or its circumcision, nor 

133 



'^ ■ 



134 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



through the promises or privileges sealed to the 
Jews, could the gospel blessings be reached. 
God called that nation only to covenant engage- 
ments, and then sealed it. But by a new, a dif- 
ficult, a narrow and yet a living way, through 
the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, can 
the nations rise from the very borders of the pit 
into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, and 
be blessed with Abraham and his seed. Hence 
the wall of partition is shattered forever. 

How could this be more clearly syllabled in 
monumental stone than it is here? The down- 
ward drift continues to the verge of the bottom- 
less pit. The way into the grand gallery is 
wedged, sealed, blocked up. Bat a new, a 
difficult, narrow way leads to it through the 
chasm made by the burst-up ramp stone, sym- 
bol of Christ's atoning work. 

This symbolism of the Pyramid was first sug- 
gested, not by the astronomer who visited the 
Pyramid for strictly scientific observation, but 
by a deeply pious converted Jew who had never 
been in Egypt. The account of this is given by 
the Astronomer Eoyal for Scotland: 

"It was in 1865," says Prof. Smyth, "that 
a letter reached me at the Great Pyramid, trans- 
mitted with some high recommendations of its 
author, by that most upright knightly man, the 
late Mr. Maitland, Sheriff Clerk of the County 
of Edinburgh. 'He is a young ship-builder,' 
said he, 'a son of a ship-builder, an accom- 
plished draughtsman, and I hear that he lately 



THE GREAT PYRAMID, 135 

turned out, from his own design, one of the most 
perfect ships that ever left Leith Docks. From 
his boyhood upwards he has been an intense 
student of whatever could be procured con- 
cerning the Great Pyramid. His family surname 
is Menzies.' 

" This Israelite, then, but no Jew, it was who 
first, to my knowledge, broke ground in the 
Messianic Symbolisms of the Great Pyramid, so 
intensified subsequently by Mr. Casey, and, after 
long feeling his way in an humble and prayerful 
spirit, at length unhesitatingly declared that the 
immense superiority in height of the Grand Gal- 
lery over every other passage in the Great Pyr- 
amid arose from its representing the Christian 
Dispensation. ' 

" * From the north beginning of the grand gal- 
lery floor,' said Eobert Menzies, 'there, in the 
southward precession, begin the years of the 
Savior's early life, expressed at the rate of a 
pyramid inch to a year. Three-and-thirty inch- 
years, therefore, bring us right over against the 
mouth of the well, the type of His death, and 
His glorious resurrection too; while the long, 
lofty grand gallery shows the dominating rule 
in the world of the blessed religion which He 
hath established thereby, over-spanned above 
by the thirty-six stones of His months of min- 
istry on earth, and defined by the floor-length in 
inches (1881 inch years) as to exact periods. 
The Bible, fully studied, shows that He intended 
that first dispensation to last only for a time ; a 



136 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



time, too, which may terminate very much 
sooner than most men expect, and shown by the 
southern wall impending.' 

" Whereupon I went straight to the south wall 
of the grand gallery, and found that it was im- 
pending ; by the quantity, too, if that interests 
any one, of about one degree (about six years ) ; 
and where Mr. Menzies could have got that 
piece of information from I cannot imagine, for 
thei north wall is not impending; he, too, was 
never at the Great Pyramid, and I have not seen 
the double circumstance chronicled elsewhere. 
The first ascending passage, moreover, he ex- 
plained as representing the Mosaic dispensa- 
tion. I measured it, and found it to be, from 
the north beginning of the grand gallery, the 
natal year of Christ, to its junction with the 
roof of the entrance-passage northward and 
below, or to some period in the life of Moses, 
1,483 pyramid inches, and when produced across 
that passage, so as to touch its lloor,^ 1,542 
inches. 

"But the chief line of human history with 
Eobert Menzies was the floor of the entrance- 
passage. Beginning at its upper and northern 
end, it starts at the rate of a pyramid inch to a 
year, from the dispersion of mankind (2527 B. C), 
or from the period when men declined any 
longer to live the patriarchal life of divine in- 
struction, and insisted on going off with their 
own inventions^ and which is sensibly repre- 
sented to the very life or death in the long-con- 



THE GREA T P YRAMJD. 137 

tinned descent of the entrance- passage of the 
Great Pyramid, more than 4000 inch-years long, 
until it ends in the Bottomless Pit, a chamber, 
already mentioned, deep in the rock. One es- 
cape, indeed, there was, in that long and mourn- 
ful history of human decline, but for a few only, 
when the exodus took place in the ascending 
passage which leads on into the grand gallery, 
showing Hebraism ending in its original pro- 
phetic destination — Christianity. But another 
escape was also eventually provided, to prevent 
any one being necessarily lost in the bottomless 
pit ; for, before reaching that dismal abyss, 
there is a possible entrance, though it may be 
by a strait and narrow way, to the one only 
gate of salvation through the death of Christ, 
mz.: the well representing His descent into 
hades, not the bottomless pit of idolaters and 
the wicked at the lowest point to which the en- 
trance-passage subterraneously descends, but a 
natural grotto rather than artificial chamber, in 
the course of the well's further progress to the 
other {)lace ; while the stone which once cov- 
ered that welPs upper mouth is blown outwards 
into the grand gallery (and was once so thrown 
out with excessive force and is now annihilated) 
carrying part of the wall with it, and indicating 
how totally unable w^as the grave to hold Him 
beyond the appointed time. 

" ' That sounds fair and looks promising 
enough, so far,' said Mr. Casey, ' but that is not 
J(9 



l.'^8 THE GREA T P YRAMID. 

enough yet to be the turning point with me, 
when interests so immense are at stake. We 
must have more than that, and something not 
less than proof of this order. Measuring along 
the passages backward from the north begin- 
ning of the grand gallery, you will find the exo- 
dus at either 1483 or 1542 B. 0., and the disper- 
sion of mankind in 2527 B. 0. up at the begin- 
ning of the entrance-passage. Kow you have 
already published, years ago, that you have 
computed the date of the building of the Great 
Pyramid by modern astronomy, based on the 
Pyramid's own star-pointing, and have found it 
at 2170 B. 0. That date, according to this new 
theory, must be three or four hundred inches 
down inside the top or mouth of the entrance- 
passage. Is there any mark at that point *? For 
I feel sure that the builder, if really inspired 
from on high, would have known how many 
years were to elapse between his great mechan- 
ical work in the beginning of the world and the 
one central act of creation in the birth of the 
Divine Son, and he would have marked it there 
as the most positive and invaluable proof.' 

" So away I went," says the Astronomer Eoyal, 
"to my original notes to satisfy him, and begin- 
ning at the north end of the grand gallery count- 
ed and summed up the length of .every stone 
backward all down the first ascending passage 
then across the entrance-passage and up the 
floor-plane towards its mouth, and soon saw that 
2170 B. 0. would fall very near a most singular 



THE GREA T P YRAMID. 139 

portion of the passage. This was a line ruled 
on the stone from top to bottom of the passage 
wall, at right angles to the floor — such a line as 
might be ruled with a blunt steel instrument, 
but by a master hand for power and evenness. 
There was such a line on either wall, the west 
and the east, of the passage, and the two lines 
seemed to be pretty accurately opposite to each 
other. When Mr. Casey required, in 1872, to 
know exactly where, on the floor, the line on 
either side touched the plane, there was no 
ready prepared record to say. Every interve- 
ning measure by joints between the two ex- 
tremes, and over scores of joints, had been pro- 
cured, printed and published to the world in 
1867 ; but just the last item required, merely the 
small distance from the nearest joint to the 
drawn line, was wanting. 

" So I wrote to my friend Mr. Dixon, 0. E., 
then erecting his brother's bridge over the Mle, 
near Cairo, requesting him to have the goodness 
to make and send me careful measures of the 
distance of the tine line on either passage wall 
at the Pyramid, from the nearest one of the two 
gi^a.s^'- vertical joints, not giving him any idea 
what the measure was wanted for, but only ask- 
ing him to be very precise, clear and accurate. 
And so he was, taking out also as companion 
and duplicate measurer his friend Dr. Grant, of 
Cairo; and their doubly attested figures were 
sent to me on diagrams, in a manner which left 
no room for misunderstanding. With this piece 



140 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



of difference measure I set to work again on my 
older joint measures of the whole distance, and 
was almost appalled when, on applying the 
above difference, the east side gave forth 2170.5 
and the west side 2170.4 pyramid inches or 
years. 

" ' This testimony satisfies me and fills me 
with thankfulness and joy,' wrote Mr. Casey, 
while I never expected to have measured so 
closely as that along either side of those lengthy, 
dark and sloping Pyramid passages." * 

In other words, it is found by the most careful 
scientific measurements that at 628 inches from 
the ascending passage, counting backward to- 
wards the entrance, are these two remarkable 
ruled lines. That ascending passage is 1542 
inches long. Add this to the 628, and the date 
of the Pyramid is found. By the lettering 
on loose stones found by Col. Yyse this 
date was evidently 2170 years before Christ. 
By the astronomical calculations made at Col. 
Yyse's request by Sir John Herschel, this date 
was found to be 2170 years before Christ. And 
now, counting back from the beginning of the 
grand gallery 1542 inches, and then upward to- 
wards the main entrance 628 inches, the result 
is 2170 inches, where the two ruled lines are 
found — the symbols of erection, of building up 
and marking, — 



* Smyth's " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramicl," 
pp. 430-437. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 141 

1. The year the great Pyramid ivas built. 

2. The advent of the God man. 

3. Messianic symhoUsm. an inch for a year 
in the grand gallery. 

The evidence is startling, that the builders 
of the Pyramid laid off those passages so that 
they should be historic scrolls of sacred his- 
tory — an inch answering to a year. This con- 
firms the conjecture that the ascending, blocked- 
up passage was meant to symbolize the time 
from the exodus to the birth of Christ — 1542 
years. Then it also follows that the Pyramid 
was a prophecy of the advent of the Eedeemer, 
and a parable of the gospel dispensation. An 
inch for a year, counting backwards 2170 inches, 
marks the year the massive monument was 
built. 1542 inches mark the years of the Mosaic 
dispensation. And thirty-three inches from the 
beginning of the seven-fold gallery, mark the 
life and death of Jesus. Oh, it is wondrous ! 
''^Mystery, all mystery^'^ exclaimed the Freiicb 
savant. 

"A sign and a witness unto the Lord in the 
midst of the land of Egypt." 

Testifying to this infidel age the truth of 
God's word. 



CHAPTER YII. 

THE HISTORIC PARABLES AND PROPHECIES. 

JA VERYTHING is mysterious,^^ wrote the 

' JLL/ Erencli savant.* " We are not at all 
enlightened, either upon the origin or 
the employment, the utility or any motive what- 
ever for the grand gallery and its various 
passages." 

Why those benches, or ramps, all along the 
sides of this long narrow passage, leaving a 
pathway ot only two feet between them *? Why 
these lateral slits or holes like little graves 
in each of those bench or ramp stones ? Why 
these upright stones let into the wall behind 
them ? Why the height of this passage 28 feet, 
while those leading to and from it are but four 
feet ? Why those thirty-six great granite blocks 
spanning its narrow ceiling, and why its exquis- 
ite mechanical workmanship and polish ? If it 
was intended for a passway only, why all this 
elaborate work and finish ? 

All indeed is mystery^ only unfolded when the 
whole is viewed as a parable in stone — a monu- 
mental apocalypse of eternal truth and human 
history. 

We have already seen how completely its 



* Jornard, 1801. 

142 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. ' • 143 

meclianical data symbolize transactions the 
most important in their bearing on the world's 
destiny. These ramp holes or little graves, 
with the upright stones beside them, voice in 
impressional though silent eloquence, the res- 
urrection from the grave following the resur- 
rection of the Lord Jesus Christ. They com- 
mence, after the symbol of His resurrection ; 
they succeed the uprooted ramp stone which is 
thirty-three inches from the beginning of the 
grand gallery. 

And now, here is a remarkable fact in regard 
to those benches or ramp stones which border 
the corridor all the way up from the burst-out 
stone to the high step at its south end. The 
ramp stones are smooth and unmarked ( except 
by the little graves already mentioned) for 
just four hundred inches from the beginning of 
the gallery ; there commences a change. Along 
nearly the whole distance from 400 to 1800 
inches of the western ramp, and occasionally 
along the eastern, there are longitudinal parallel 
scratches. " They are inflected upon and along 
its upper edge."* 

Then further along from the beginning, from 
640 to 1400 inches, these bench stones are 
fissured or parted from the walls, and especially 
from 1000 to 1317 the ramp stones have yielded, 
so as almost to break away the portion marked 
with the lateral holes or little graves. 



* Smyth's " Life and Work.'' 



144 • THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

Now as there is no pressure on these bench 
stones or ramps, which are, in fact, borders, 
( like our wash boards ) all along the corridor — 
as they are seldom trodden on by explorers — the 
conclusion forces itself upon the mind that 
these fissures were formed in these stones when 
placed in position, and were designed as symbols 
of historic events connected with Christ's peo- 
ple. They must have been constructed as they 
now appear, and for what purpose but as sym- 
bols— j)ro2?/ie^ic parables in stone f 

Four hundred inches from the beginning of 
the gallery these scratches are " inflected.''^ In 
that year the general defection from the simple 
gospel began. Early in the year 400 A. D., Con- 
stantine the Great took the churches under im- 
perial patronage, and pastors of independent 
churches soon began to aspire to princely rank. 
In the year 381, the second Council of Constan- 
tinople decreed that "the bishop of Constanti- 
nople should take rank after the bishop of 
Eome." A few years afterwards the Eoman 
bishop claimed to be Peter's successor, and in 
445 Yalentinian issued a law " that the primacy 
of the apostolic seat having been established 
by the merit of the apostle Peter, the whole 
Church shall acknowledge the bishops of that 
city as rulers."* 

Protests and separations from this law-church 



* Neaiider, VoJ. 11,. p. 174. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 145 

occurred all through the empire, followed by 
banishments and varied persecutions. A hier- 
archy was erected after the models of Judaism 
and Paganism. The spiritual true people of 
God, the true Church of Christ, fled into the 
wilderness. The heavy hand of despotic power 
crushed out their visible existence. 

From the year 400 A. T>. to the latter years of 
the 14th century, when Wyckliffe lifted his 
voice in England, and Huss in Bohemia, and the 
Waldenses in the Alps, the doctrines of the gos- 
pel, like the stone benches in the grand gal- 
lery, from the same and to the same number gf 
inches, were marked, broken, "fissured," "and 
almost severed " from the foundation of the 
gospel. 

In the Pyramid gallery the east ramp has 
yielded ; from 640 inches to 1087 is frail material 
and " is fissured and parted from the walls, also 
the floor from the ramps."* Especially is this 
the case from 1087 to 1317. On the east side 
the ramp is broken away and the holes or little 
graves are almost entirely gone. The crum- 
bling or decay of the stones here, both on the 
east and west side, surpasses any portion of the 
structure within or without. 

At 640 inches, this " frail material fissured and 
parted from the walls " appears. In 622 Moham- 
medanism was established in the East, having 



Life and Work at the Great Pyramid." 



146 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



burst like a tornado from the desert. The trans- 
gressors had come to the full Maryology, and 
masses for the dead and priestly intercessions 
took the place of the worship and intercession 
of Jesus, the only Lord and priest. The darkness 
of Egyptian night prevailed. And from the time 
of the first crusade, till the hour tbat Peter 
de Bruys was burnt at the stake, 1144 A. D. 
— agreeing with these fissured and loosened 
ramps — the gospel was silenced east and west, 
and the traces of the true churches are lost 
sight of in the darkness and confusion, and 
deep apostacy of the times. From 640 to 1400 
inches, the floor is parted from the ramp stone. 
From the year 640 ( the missing stone ), to the 
Reformation — the time of the Lollards in Eng- 
land and Waldenses on the continent — scarce 
a voice was raised in testimony of Christ and 
His truth. 

These striking symbols with all their speak- 
ing fitness and significance, when taken alone 
have no seeming importance. But associated 
with all the vivid emblems of that mysterious 
gallery, they proclaim the Pyramid's interior a 
parahle of prophecy, as the proportions of the 
exterior proclaim it a parable of scientific facts. 

Passing up this wondrous chamber with its 
lofty ceiling spanned with thirty-six polished 
granite blocks which shelter and protect it- 
numbering the months of Christ's public min- 
istry — with all its solemn, awe-inspiring mys- 



THE G^EAT PYkAMID. I4f 

teriousness — we come to a Mgli step very near 
the gallery^s close. 

It is a part of the floor of the corridor, or grand 
gallery. It has the lateral holes or little graves 
cut in it, as the ramp stones have. Why this 
sudden step three feet high % 

It is remarkable for being of softer lime- 
stone than any other part of the floor. It is 
cracked and worn, as is no other part of the 
floor lines in the Pyramid. The material of 
which this high step is composed was evidently 
selected for a purpose. The step itself is pur- 
poseless, and more than useless, except as 
a symbol. It is a sudden and unneces- 
sary interruption in the ascent. If, as some 
suppose, the stone chest in the King's Cham- 
ber was brought up through this passage, or if 
any thing else large, and heavy, and requiring 
care, was to be borne along into the inner cham- 
ber, this abrupt step of three feet would be an 
inconvenient obstruction. But there it is, and 
of frailer material than any other portion of the 
floor. It indicates a sudden uprise, associated 
with lack of stability. 

This step three feet high occurs just 1813 
inches from the beginning of the gallery. That 
number of inches corresponds with a remark- 
able year in elevated ranges of gospel service. It 
was the year following the close of the war be- 
tween the only two nations in which Christ's peo- 
ple were awake to the duty of sending the gospel 
to the nations — England and America. It was 



148 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

a time of temporary peace through Europe. It 
was soon followed by the fall of Napoleon, and 
a general peace through the earth. It was the 
year when the British Parliament lifted the op- 
pressive hand of the East India Company from 
off the missionaries who sought to reside and to 
labor in India. Up to 1812, missionaries who 
might arrive in India intent on preaching the 
gospel were '^ at once expelled from the 
country." Judson and Eice, the first American 
missionaries to the East Indies, reached that 
land of pagan darkness in 1812. While at Cal- 
cutta they were harassed by the East India 
( British ) officials, and ordered out of the 
country, and had to retire to the Isle of France. 
The great Wilberforce, after a twenty years' 
struggle, having been defeated in his advocacy 
of the " Indian clauses " in 1793, rose in triumph- 
ant eloquence to plead the cause of the mission- 
aries in 1813, and on the night of the 22d of 
June of that year the " clauses " were passed in 
the British House of Commons by a majority of 
53, and became law in India. The missionaries 
returned to Burmah. The British flag was 
henceforth their protection. Wilberforce had 
declared " this East India subject is assuredly 
the greatest that ever interested the heart or 
engaged the efforts of man " — " the greatest of 
all causes, namely, of laying a ground for com- 
munication to our India fellow subjects of Chris- 
tian light and moral improvement," and then 
wrote in his private diary, " I humbly hope that 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 149 

God has great designs in view for the East, and 
that they will be executed by Great Britain/' 

This Act of the British Parliament was fol- 
lowed by a general awakening through England 
and America, in regard to sending the gospel to 
the nations. It was an epoch in the history of 
the gospel dispensation. The day had come 
when " many should run to and fro and knowl- 
edge increase," and " this gospel of the kingdom 
be preached to all nations, and then shall the end 
come." 

That year was followed by the advance in all 
that characterizes the activity and benevolence 
of the present age — discoveries, inventions, 
missionary organizations, public spirit and gen- 
erous liberality in the founding and endowment 
of educational and humane institutions, the 
pride and boast of the hour. Society has been 
lifted to a higher plane, and Christianity in all 
its outward efforts and aggressive movements 
stands on a lofty step from which she can look 
back and down on the narrower and lower path 
trodden in past years. 

But with all this intellectual and social prog- 
ress, all this advance in the outward, the* active 
and the material, where is the piety, the heart 
devotion, the calm thought and unshrinking 
faith, of these elevated and enlightened times *? 

As the high step in the Pyramid is of pliable 
or of less substantial material than any part of 
the floors either of the grand gallery or the 
other passages, so in all the boasted progress 



150 • THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

and advance of the present day there has been 
a crumbling away of basal truth. Vital doc- 
trines have been and are ignored and even de- 
nied with levity, and often with derision, by the 
accredited ministers of the churches of the 
Reformation. Downright infidels have poured 
from Lutheran pulpits ridicule on the doctrines 
of grace preached by Luther. A bishop of the 
Anglican church is in foremost ranks of the im- 
pugners of God's word. Dignitaries in Scot- 
land's free church have become the apologists 
and abettors of skepticism. In " evangelical " 
pulpits and theological schools of almost every 
denomination the full or real inspiration of 
God's word has been denied. Work is the 
watchword and faith is decried. The upward 
step is the image of that lack of rugged, stead- 
fast, immovable faith which once distinguished 
the followers of the Lord. 

The magnificent endowments of literary and 
theological schools, the erection of splendid 
houses of worship, the provisions made for the 
helpless, and the bond of sympathy established 
between distant peoples by which the public 
sentiment is aroused by the cry of the oppressed, 
and aid is rendered to the victims of flood or 
flame — all this is an upward step, elevating this 
nineteenth century above all ages of the past. 
Yet beneath all this is an emasculated, shat- 
tered, yielding theology, which places humanity 
above dogma — that is, a depraved nature above 
divine truth, worJc Sihoye faith, the material above 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 151 

he spiritual, and the present above the future. 
The time has come when " men will not endure 
sound doctrine. ^^ Well-paid musicians, and 
costly floral displays, and secular themes, and 
the sounds and sights in so-called evangelical 
churches, have taken the place of the glorious 
gospel of our blessed God. The upward step, 
fractured and marred as it was when placed 
there toward the close of the graod gallery, is 
a parable in stone of the days preceding Christ^s 
coming. "As it was in the days of Koah, so 
shall it be in the days of the Son of Man." 

What is the record of the years in which we 
now live ? 

" This is a delicate, soft-stepping, silken-slip- 
pered age,'' says a Christian philosopher, " pat- 
ronizing the filler feelings and a high-flown emo- 
tional virtue ; vice has cast away its coarse and 
tattered garment, and, though finding no great 
difldculty in obtaining admittance into good so- 
ciety, must come with sleek visage, in a spruce, 
modern suit, glittering with what seems real 
gold; the religion that languishes in luxurious 
aspirings or dreams, is very widely approved of. 
But does not an elevated and insidious but fatal 
pride tend to pervade the moral atmosphere of 
the time ? We will glow in lofty ardor over the 
pages of Fichte, Carlyle, Schiller or Goethe, but 
it is a balmy and consoling air which breathes 
its mild adulation through our souls ; for is it 
not our own nobleness which is so gratefully 
evoked % We will worship in the Temple of the 



152 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

Universe, with a certain and proud homage, like 
that of the stars, and winds, and oceans ; but 
our lordly knees must not be soiled by getting 
down into the dust. We will perform with 
Goethe the great moral act of self-annihilation, 
and wrap ourselves, with much ado, in the three 
reverences ; but it were strangely bigoted to 
weep like an old Puritan because we cannot 
leap from sin, our shadow. Christianity, we pro- 
claim, is pervading the age more deeply than 
ever before; not now as a constraining and an- 
tiquated form, but as an essence and life ; not, 
indeed, with remarkable definiteness, not troub- 
ling itself to answer such minor questions as 
whether Christ's history is an actual fact, or 
whether Paul was an inspired preacher or a 
moral genius troubled with whims, but with a 
grand expansiveness and philosophic tolerance 
sweet to remark, casting a respectful and even 
deferring glance toward its plebeian ancestor of 
Judea, in whose steps, however, an enlightened 
descendant cannot exactly walk." * 

This is the upward step — the close of the gos- 
pel dispensation symbolized by that three-foot 
step of soft and unendurable material at the end 
of the grand gallery. 

And over this step the end or south wall im- 
pends. This may be noticed by examining the 
engraving. It leans as though it might fall over 



* Bay lie's " Christian Life," p. 44. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 153 

that remarkable step. The close may come at 
any moment, but its coming is surely near. 

1881.4 inches is the floor-length of this won- 
derful seven-fold corridor. This is the length, 
however, when the calculated measurement is 
continued up the inclined floor under the step 
to where it ends evenly with the end wall. But 
the step itself is 36 inches high and 61 inches 
along or towards the end wall ; that is, 97 inches 
from the line where the step commences. This 
makes the grand gallery floor line measure — 

To the step 1813 inches. 

To top of the step 36 " 

Along the step 61 " 

Whole floor length ..1910 " 

If these symbolisms are true, if there was an 
object in all this elaborate work in the grand 
gallery, if the 33 inches mark the period from 
Christ's birth to His death and resurrection — 
unless all these wondrous symbols are treated, 
as they will be by millions, as trifles deserving- 
no attention — if there is any truth in God's 
Book and reliance on its prophetic teachings, 
and correspondence between the times in which 
we live and those announced by the Holy Spirit 
as preceding the coming of the Son of Man — 
then the close of this dispensation is near, and 
the change is even now taking place, and tlie 
time is at hand. The teachings of the Pyramid 
as a parable in stone, correspond with the teach- 
ings of Christ in the parable of the virgins, and 
of the tares and the wheat. 11 



CHAPTER yill. 
ESCHATOLOGY — THE GREAT TRIBULATION. 

tj(jASSING from the long and lofty corridop 
I over the Mgli step there is a sudden change. 
The passage is low and narrow, with no 
ascent, but a dead level. The passage which 
leads into the grand gallery is fifty-two inches 
in vertical height. It is with bent form that it 
is traversed. But the one leading from its lofty 
corridor is only forty-four inches — the lowest 
passage-way, except the so-called Well, in the 
whole Pyramid. The transition is impressive. 
The change is abrupt, oppressive, appalling. 
From the high step, from the lofty granite- 
spanned ceiling, here is a narrow, low tunnel in 
traversing which one must move with pain. 

What a speaking parable of the tribulation 
which Christ predicts must follow the close of 
this dispensation ! Foretelling the close of this 
gospel age or dispensation Jesus said : " This 
gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all 
the world FOR A WITIS'ESS, and then shall the 
end come."* And again " and the gospel must 
first be published to the nations.'''t Then fol- 
lows the time of sorrow, of tribulation, of 



* Matthew 24: 14. 

t Mark 13 : 10. 154 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 155 

eclipse and decline. Now the brother shall be- 
tray the brother to death. " And yet ye shall 
be hated by all men for my name's sake, but he 
that shall endure to the end, the same shall be 
saved." " For in those days there shall be 
affliction such as was not from the beginning of 
the creation which God created unto this time, 
neither shall be. And except that the Lord had 
shortened those days no flesh should be saved, 
but for the elect's sake, whom He hath chosen, 
He hath shortened those days."* Speaking of 
this same time — the end of the gospel age — 
preceding the time when " many of those that 
sleep in the earth shall awake," the Holy Spirit 
says through Daniel : " And at that time shall 
Michael stand up, the great prince which stand- 
eth for the children of thy people; and there 
shall be a time of trouble, such as never was 
since there was a nation even to that same time : 
and at that time thy people shall be delivered, 
every one found written in the book." f 

A time of trouble such as never was. And the 
passage following the high step and the end of 
the gallery is lower than any preceding path- 
way. It is lower than the downward one along 
which the Dragon star gleamed. 

But though so-low, so difficult, it is short. It is 
only fifty-three inches in length. " But for the 



- Mark 13 : 19. 
t Daniel 12 : 1. 



lo6 THE GREA T P YRAMID. 

elect^s sake he hath shortened these days."* 
" Now," saith the Lord Jesus, "learn a para- 
ble of the fig-tree, when her branch is yet 
tender and putteth forth leaves ye know the 
summer is nigh." This He said in regard to the 
literal predictions just quoted. "The gospel is to 
be preached a8 a icitness to all nations and then 
shall the end (of this dispensation ) come." The 
high step, the elevation and advancement, the 
activities and enlightenment, the organized 
efforts to send the gospel every where, aided 
often by men who deny the full inspiration of 
God's blessed word— all these, like the leaves on 
the fig-tree, are the signs of the coming hour 
— or time of tribulation. The parable of the 
Pyramid corresponds with the parable of the fig- 
tree. 

Fifty -three inches lead to a comparatively 
high but small room known as the ante-cham- 
ber. It is so called because it is so near, and 
leads into the principal room, or King's Cham- 
ber. This ante-chamber is about twelve feet high^ 
five and a half feet wide, and nine and a half feet 
long. Its sides are ornamented with what may 
be termed wainscot ting, or dado cut in the stone 
walls. These walls are part of granite and part 
of limestone. 

Passing along the narrow and low pathway 
from the high step this ante-room is entered, 



* Mark 13 : 20. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 157 

but just at the entrance is a double block of 
granite crossing the whole chamber from east 
to west. It is set in hollows cut in the wall, and 
rests on a ledge made by these hollows. This 
block of granite crosses the entrance-way into 
the chamber twenty-one inches from the wall 
and doorway. It has been supposed to be a 
part of a system of sliding doors, and the 
grooves cut all round the room, with no stones 
set in them, have been supposed to have been 
cut for a similar purpose. Hence this double 
block was called by Professor Greaves, two 
hundred years ago, the " granite leaf" — the word 
leaf being borrowed from the old term used to 
denote a sliding door over the water-way of the 
lock or gate of an English canal. The unfamil- 
iar term, however, is confusing. It is better to 
think of it simply as a double granite entrance 
block, for it never could have been intended, as it 
never could have been used, for a sliding door, 
or portcullis. It rests solid — not loose, as some 
who have written on the Pyramid have said — 
on ledges formed in the wall by the hollows cut 
above these ledges, though not built into or con- 
nected with the walls. The double block — that 
is, one stone upon another — is made to fit into 
these grooves or hollows nearly midway from 
the ceiling to the floor. This double block is 15 
inches thick and 48 inches in breadth from the 
grooves on the east and west wall— the part of 
the chamber above the grooves and wainscot 
being broader by 17 inches than the part of the 



158 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

room where this double granite block crosses it 
like a frowning judgment bar. 

And this block of hard granite set there in 
the firm grooves has to be met and "under- 
gone " by all who pass into the royal chamber. 
The thought involuntarily starts in the soul of 
every serious person standing before it and 
passing under it : " Has not this a solemn 
meaning, and is not that solemn meaning the 
test, the trial, the judgment — the day of de- 
cision and of vengeance, the great and terrible 
day of the Lord, when He will sit as a refiner — 
when the heathen shall be given Him for an in- 
heritance and the uttermost parts of the earth 
for a possession, and He shall break them with 
a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a 
potter's vessel ■? " * 

On that frowning granite block, that impresses 
one with what must be the crushing effects of 
its fall on any one passing under — grinding to 
powder and breaking to pieces as a potter's ves- 
sel — there is a jutting protuberance or bulb at 
its top. It is called the granite boss. It is the 
shape of a half moon, and has been carefully 
formed by the workman's chisel. It is exactly 
one pyramid inch thick and five pyramid inches 
hroad. These are the ground elements of meas- 
urement throughout the whole vast structure. 
It symbolizes, indeed, rule, measure and weight. 



* Ps. 2 : 8, 9. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 159 

This whole ante-chamber is fairly syllabled with 
symbols of earth-commensuration and density. 
In entering it, all are confronted by this granite 
moveless standard which crosses and bars up 
the chamber, and on which are stamped the units 
of measure, the inch and the cubit. It seems 
to voice with eternal emphasis the declaration, 
"Judgment also will I lay to the line, and right- 
eousness to the plummet, and the hail shall 
sweep away the refuge of lies." * 

Like so many other things in this mysterious 
structure, there is no possible use or object for 
this double granite block unless it be symboli- 
cal. That it was not intended for a portcullis, 
or sliding door, is evidenced by the fact that it 
rests in the solid wall in which the grooves are 
cut for it to fit and lodge. This part of the wall 
would have to be cut down to the floor before 
it could be slid down so as to form a door. But 
then, as it is twenty-one inches from the wall 
where the entrance is, it could be passed even 
if it touched the floor. It does not reach the 
ceiling now, and if it were let down to the floor 
it could easily be scaled. " I myself," says the 
Scottish Astronomer, "sat above that double 
granite block, on a ladder, day after day, with 
lamps and measuring rods, hut in respectful silence, 
and generally in absolute solitude, thinJcing over 
what it might meanJ^ f 



* [sa. 28 : 17. 

■} Smyth's 'Inheritance,'" p. 175, 



IGO THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

In wondrous harmony with all that precedes 
it, this frowning block of granite which bars a 
chamber in which, are engraven, in imperishable 
granite, rules and measures affecting the whole 
building and relating to all nature, is the sym- 
bol of the great day of decision, when in right- 
eousness " He will judge and make war." 

Passing under this double granite block called 
the " granite leaf," the ante-room is entered. It 
is a relief. The bowed form erects itself. The 
air, too, is different. A ventilating tube, though 
somewhat closed up, enters this room from 
the far-off exterior, and produces a felt change 
in the condition of the atmosphere. It is a 
mysteriously-built room — partly of granite, and 
partly of limestone. The proportion of these 
materials to each other is most significant. It 
will be noticed in full farther along. 

Passing from this ante-room we bow beneath 
the fivt pilasters, made by grooves in the south 
wall, through a still lower doorway, being only 
42 inches in height and 41.4 in breadth. Then 
follows a horizontal passway, the height and 
breadth of the entrance or doorway, and 100.2 
inches long. It is all of granite. It will be ob- 
served that the granite work commences in the 
ante-chamber, except the thirty-six roof stones 
that span the graud gallery. All else till this 
ante-room is reached is limestone or marble. 
But here, in the ante-room, commences the 
granite work, mingled with limestone. What 
this signifies will appear as we proceed. From 



. THE GREA T P YRA MID. 16 1 

the ante-room all is granite. The narrow, low 
pathway which leads from it into the grand gal- 
lery is (floor, sides and ceiling) all of this sig- 
nificant material. The ante- chamber is a relief 
from the low passage that leads to it. It is over 
twelve feet high. After passing under the 
frowning granite leaf, or double block which 
bars its entrance, there is the ease and free- 
dom of this twelve-foot high room. It is like the 
respite for "a little season" from the " tribula- 
tion '^ which succeeds the close of this dispen- 
sation. 

But now comes a low, narrow passage again. 
All however, is granite, and its way leads into 
the glorious chamber of fifties — the King's 
Chamber, with its symbolic sarcophagus or 
coffer. Into this we now enter, and to it turn 
our attention. 




CHAPTER IX. 

THE king's chamber—the STONE CHEST AND 
THE ARK OF THE COVENANT — THE JUBILEE 
TEAR— CHRIST'S COMING AND KINGDOM. 

A I \ HIS inner chamber, according to all who 
i have written about the Pyramid, however 
they may differ in regard to other theor- 
etical points, is the sanctuary, the centre and 
object for which the whole gigantic work with 
all it wonders was erected. 

It is, in round n ambers, 34 feet long, 17 broad, 
and 19 high. It is constructed of polished red 
granite — floors, wall and ceiling being of the 
same material. The blocks of which it is built, 
one hundred in number, are squared with nicest 
accuracy. The joints are needle-proof, though 
cemented together with a substance of the 
finest and most adhesive quality. " Ko auto- 
cratic emperor of recent times could desire 
anything more solidly noble, and at the same 
time beautifully refined." 

When first entered by the Arabs, in search of 
the hoarded wealth of buried kings, they gazed 
in awe-struck silence on its red walls, which like 
polished jewelry reflected the gleam of their 
torches. Their wild shouts of Alia Acbar 
ceased. Pausing a moment in seemingly bowed 

162 




ANTE-CHAMBER. SOUTH END F ; C RAN D^C ALLE RYT'AN D i VYS E'S HOLLOWS OF 
CONSTRUCTION.ABOVE KINO's CHAM BEB« CROSSE B CIHESliMBICaTE ORANnE. 



ScdZe/ of^SriiisTi, Inches 



100 so 

.1 I I I I i 



.4,5P 



sotF 



i)>£ITCIll£&S6N.£Dltll 



164 THE GREAT PYRAMID, 



reverence, they looked noiselessly and cau- 
tiously for the priceless gems and charms which 
they expected to find treasured in this secret 
place. Nothing there, but a red granite stone 
chest, lidless, nameless and empty, while the 
pure unlettered polished ranks of red granite 
blocks, one hundred in number, looked calmly 
upon them from every side. Kot a hieroglyphic 
(that is a priest writing ) nor an idolatrous sign, 
nor a trace of anything Pharaonic or Egyptian, 
not a sign of kingly or x>riestly ambition or 
profanation there. Stainless as the cloudless 
skies above it, was that elaborately-wrought 
chamber. The red granite, empty, lidless chest, 
of exquisite finish, and which when struck rung 
like a bell, was the only furniture in the royal 
room for which the whole majestic pile was 
reared. 

The same solemn, majestic and mysterious 
grandeur meets the eye and impresses the heart 
of those who enter that chamber to-day, except 
when thoughtless parties bent on hilarity, and 
exciting each other to levity, unite in their 
efforts to break the spell. 

One of the first things to impress the serious 
visitor to this chamber, is the fact that it is 
built solely of granite. As before observed, all 
the rest of the structure, up to the ante-chamber 
( except the thirty-six stones that span the grand 
gallery) is of limestone. Those roof-stones of 
that corridor agree in number with the thirty- 
six months of Ohrist^s public ministry. The 



THE ORE A T PYRA MID. 1 ^^ 



double block set on ledges, a»nd under which 
the visitor has to pass into the ante-room, is 
also of granite. It strikingly symbolizes Christ's 
judgments on the nations following the close of 
the gospel dispensation. Then commences a 
granite passage — a time of preparation, leading 
into this lofty royal room, which is all of pol- 
ished granite. 

If red granite — brought from a long distance, 
as none is found in Egypt, — was intended to 
symbolize the triumphs of the Eedeemer, then 
here especially, at the close of all the passages 
leading to it, and in the chamber for which the 
whole structure was reared, red polished gran- 
ite is the fit material to set forth and prove the 
latter-day glory, when He shall reign without a 
rival, and His people " shall be priests of God 
and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thou- 
sand years." * 

Next to this impression is that produced by 
the peculiar number everywhere marking this 
royal central chamber. 

The walls are built in fi'ce horizontal courses, 
each course nearly four feet in thickness or 
height. These courses run all round the room, 
and the joints are so fine — indeed, microscopic — 
that the five layers or courses have been mis- 
taken and described by writers for " one great 
slab reaching from floor to ceiling. * * * Noble 

* Rev. 20: 6. 



166 THE GREAT BYRAMID. 

apartment cased with enormous slabs of granite 
twenty feet high." * But there are five courses 
of stone in the wall — not single slabs from floor 
to ceiling. 

These five-times-five courses of stone are sig- 
nificant, especially if Chevalier Bunsen's inter- 
pretation of the word pyramid — pyr-met^ divis- 
ion of five—is accepted. There is a niche, to 
which reference has already been made, in the 
chamber below this, called the Queen's Cham- 
ber, which has five ledges, or stories, its inner 
edge five times five inches from the center of 
the wall in which it is cut. In this upper royal 
chamber the lowest of the five courses of stone 
composing its walls goes down just five inches 
below the floor. This course is five inches less 
in height than those above it "by nearly one- 
tenth part, if measured from the base of its own 
granite component blocks which descend in the 
wall to beneath the floor's level." t 

This five characteristic of the royal chamber 
is the more remarkable when it is remembered 



* Lord Lindsey, 1837. 

t Professor Smyth gives in full detail the measure of this 
room in his "Life and Work at the Great Pyramid," vol. 
11. He accompanies these details with the measures of an 
engineer sent by a rich man to the Pyramid, with the ob- 
ject of " tripping up " the astronomer, if possible. The 
published results of the engineer's measurements com- 
pletely confirmed Professor Smyth. See "Our Inher- 
itance," p. 169. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. ■ 167 

that (as shown in the previous chapter) in pass- 
ing through the lower doorway from the ante- 
room five pilaster-like marks, made by grooves 
cut in the wall above it, must be passed under 
to reach this granite room. 

In addition to these fi^^ courses of stone 
forming the walls, the floor is on a level with 
the fiftieth course of masonry in the Pyramid. 

There is something sublime in the contempla- 
tion of the masses of rock which form the step- 
like courses of the Pyramid itself. Standing 
midway up the mighty structure, as the writer 
has done, one feels that arrangements must have 
been made on a scale surpassing anything known 
on earth, and plans originating in the mighty 
minds were carried out with astonishing preci. 
sion. Prominent among these executed plans is 
the level of this royal granite chamber with the 
fiftieth course of these vast layers of rock over 
the thirteen-acre base of the huge pile. And 
these courses, though different in thickness 
from each other, are each the same thickness 
all through every one course — that is, whatever 
height or thickness of stones any one course is 
begun with, it is kept on, at that thickness pre- 
cisely, right through the whole Pyramid at that 
level, though the horizontal line may amount to 
whole acres. 

" Having measured the thickness of every 
component course of the Pyramid one day in 
April, 1865, when ascending the summit, and 
another day when descending, I compared and 



1 68 THE GREA T P YRAMID. 



confirmed these figures with my own photo- 
graphs of the buildmg, under a compound mi- 
croscope, and also with similar numbers ob- 
tained from still more careful measures by the 
French Academicians in 1799, and then began 
to sum up the courses' successive thicknesses to 
give the whole height of any particular number 
of courses. On reaching in this manner the 
fiftieth course, lo ! the total height of that stra- 
tum gave the hypsometrical * level of the floor 
of the King's Chamber as well as it has yet been 
ascertained by all the best authorities." f 

The chamber below this, called the Queen's, 
is just twenty-five of these courses from the 
base, while this is fifty. It therefore may well 
be termed the Chamber of Fifties. Here, then, 
is a room with five and its multiples majestically 
engraved upon its shining granite. It has on its 
walls five courses of stone that seem like one 
It is placed on the fiftieth layer of rock in the 
Pyramid. It is formed of just one hundred 
stones, each of the same size, fives, ten times 
five, and twenty times five. 

Fives mark the earth's polar diameter. It is 
five hundred millions of inches. Five marks 
the human form — the limbs parting with five 
extremities. Five senses mark the animal crea- 



* Measure by barometer, boiling of water, or any other 
means than by triangulation. 

t " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," p. 173. 



"> 



THE GREA T P YRA MID. 169 

tion. The Hebrews were to march from Egypt 
in ranks of fives — a number hateful to the Egyp- 
tians. Five is the number of the Books of 
Moses, called the Law. Five times five is the 
ascertained length of the sacred cubit, the meas- 
uring rod of the ark and the tabernacles. 

In the roval chamber stands the stone chest, 
the size internally of the chest or ark of the 
covenant. In that sacred chest were placed the 
tables of the Law, which Christ came to fulfill, 
the pot of manna, type of Christ, the bread of 
life, and Aaron's rod that budded, type of His 
resurrection. On that sacred chest or ark was 
the mercy seat, and the unfolding glory of the 
Shekinah. It was kept sacred in the sanctum 
sanctoruniy in the secret place of the Tabernacle. 
It was preceded by the holy place, or ante-room. 
It was veiled and entered with bowed awe. It 
was made of acacia^ and was itself lidless, though 
a mercy seat of pure gold was made to be placed 
over it. The chest itself was two and a half 
cubits long, one and a half cubits broad, and 
one and a half high. These measures, re- 
duced by Sir Isaac Newton's valuation of the 
sacred cubit to pyramid inches, equal 62^x37i 
X37i. 

But this is outside measure, because height 
and not depth is spoken of, and especially as 
the mercy seat or lid of gold was to be made 
the same length and breadth ; which, if inside 
measure, would make it fit into the box, or fall 



170 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

to the bottom, instead of being a lid resting 
even with its oi^sides. " If we consider the 
thickness of the sides and ends of the ark, If 
of an inch, and the bottom, 2 inches — a very fair 
proportion in carpentery for such a sized box 
in such a quality of (hard) wood — then its inside 
measures are 59x34x35^=71,213 as its cubical 
contents." * 

Now, by repeated scientific admeasurements 
by Professor Greaves, the old Oxford professor, 
by Sir Howard Vyse, and especially by the 
Astronomer Eoyal for Scotland, with sliding iron 
measuring rods constructed for this very pur- 
pose — admeasurements, tested and compared by 
civil engineers, with all modern appliances — we 
obtain to the thousandth part of an inch the 
cubit capacity of the stone chest in the royal 
chamber — 71,213 _cubit inches, f 

Here, then, with all the difficulties attending a 
true admeasurement to the least fraction, the 
wonderful fact appears that the sacred ark — 
type of the Eedeemer — was the same size, in its 
internal capacity, as the stone chest or ark in 
the older and more gigantic work of man, this 
massive and mysterious pile. This stone chest, 
or ark, moreover, resembles a lidless coffin. 
So did the sacred ark, which God commanded 
Moses to make, with the same inner dimension, 



* Piazzi Smyth's "Life and Work." 
f For full statement of these measures and their con- 
firmations, see Third Part. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 171 



a 



and place in the secret and sacred chamber of 

the Tabernacle. Each resembles a coffin, or a 

tomb. For the empty, lidless tomb was the 

test and the glory of the Eedeemer's person 

and work. The empty, lidless tomb is the token 

of triumph, ^God gave all men evidence that -^ ^\ 

Christ's work was accepted, " in that He raised 

him from the dead.'' 

" When first humanity, triumphant, passed _; 

The crystal ports of light, and seized eternal youth." {/') 

The stone coffer in the royal granite room 
resembles a coffin or tomb. So did the wooden 
coffer in the holy of holies. But no form ever \ 
mouldered in that granite coffer. No one was 
ever buried there. Empty and lidless, it rested 
in its royal enclosure at the terminus of the 
varied passages through which it could not 
pass — passages whose measures all relate to 
this final one, and rise towards it with significant 
preparations and consummating beauty ; the 
angle of ascent in those passages leading to it 
forming the radius of a circle equal to 36524 + , 
and this again equal to the four sides of the 
base, and again, divided by one hundred, equal 
to the days, hours, minutes and seconds in our 
true year. Earth and heaven, all that concerns 
man temporally and eternally are symbolized 
( whether it be by accident or design *) in this 



* The temperature is 50; the mean density (of the 
coffer ) of the Pyramid is 5. 7, equal to the mean density 
of Earth's mass. 



172 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

inner royal granite chamber with its symbolic 
tomb. 

This symbolic tomb, this ark for whose 
lodgment this glorious granite chamber of 
fifties was constructed, has been proven by an 
eminent mathematician and investigator to be of 
I the same dimensions as the brazen lavers in the 
Temple. Those lavers contained, from the 
Hebrew system of admeasurements, 40 hatlis 
or four homers. The Jewish homer has been 
shown to be equal to the Anglo-Saxon " quarter," 
still used in wheat measures. Four of these 
Hebrew homers or English quarters equal the * *- 
q> " * contents of this " sacred " coffer. It is therefore 
the size internally of the brazen laver of the 
Temple. Those lavers are considered among all 
evangelical Christians symbols of "the washing — f^ 
of regeneration by the resurrection of Jesus . g 
7 Christ from the dead." Does the coffer in the , ^ 
Pyramid symbolize the same thing 1 Was such ,s^ 
a glorious fact in God^s dispensation of mercy V- 
worthy of being memorialized by the men who 
planned that vast pile and who expressed in its 
base and height, its location and position — the 
great facts in creation and the movements of 
the stars, which it has taken toiling centuries 
for scientists to reach ? 

But in the Temple, built to symbolize Imman- 
uel, there was a vessel of still larger capacity 
than the brazen laver. It was the molten 
SEA. It was cast in bronze. Its cubical con- 
tents are given : " And he made a molten sea 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 173 

ten cubits from one beam to the other : it was 
round all about and its height was five cubits, 
and a line of thirty cubits did compass it about." 
" It contained two thousand baths."* 

Now the brazen laver contained 40 baths : 
" Then he made ten lavers of brass ; one laver 
contained forty baths," " and he put five on the 
right side of the house and five on the left 
side."t 

So the Molten Sea was 50 times the laver — 
the 40x50rr.2000, the contents of the Molten 
Sea.f 

The cubic contents, or, in other words, the 
inner dimensions of the lower course of stones 
in this chamber, are just fifty times the dimen- 
sions of the stone chest. This layer of stones 
was sunk five inches below the granite floor, 
instead of resting on it, evidently for this very 
purpose. It is five inches less in height than 
the other courses forming the walls of the 
chamber. By the most pains-taking measure- 
ments, with the most ingenious scientific meas- 
uring-rods in the hands of experienced en- 
gineers, this result has come out. Then this 
lower course of stones composing the wall is 
the same dimensions as the Molten Sea in the 
Temple of Jerusalem, which is also fifty times 



* 1 Kings, 7 : 23, 26. 
t Verses 38-9. 

X The Bath equaled 7 gallons, 4 pints, liquid measure, 
or 3 pecks and 3 pints dry measure. 



s 



.:^ ^ 



IH THE GREAT PYRAMID: 

the dimensions of the brazen laver, while the 
courses of stones which the floor of the cham- 
ber rests on is the filtieth layer of rock in the 
^'^'^ ^ Pyramid itself. 
"^^"•^^^ The Ark, the Brazen Laver, and the Molten 
2* ? Sea — expressive svmbols of the redemption 
S^ s.^— that is in Christ — seem duplicated in this cham- 
ber of fifties. It is the Jubilee number, and it 
f^ ^~ ^^ ^^ Jubilee Chamber. The fiftieth year was 
-'4^ the herald of deliverance and joy to the op- 
'^ '\2 pressed Jew. It was the acceptable year of 
«X ^^^ Lord — the type of deliverance from sin's 
sorrow and slavery. 
% j f'S It was the type of that deliverance for which 
TV »«^»^ " the whole creation travaileth in pain together" 
— the redemption of the body and the triumph- 
ant reign of the " second man, the Lord from 
heaven." The day is coming when the words 
of the angels will be fulfilled : '-this same Jesus 
who is taken up from you into heaven shall so 
come in like manner as ye have seen Him go 
into heaven."* 

It will be the realization of the vision of John: 
" And I saw a new heaven and a new earth," 
"the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down 
from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride for 
her husband. And I heard a great voice out of 
heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God 
-s with men, and he will dwell with them, and 



* Acts 1 : 11. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 175 

they shall be His people, and God himself shall 
be with them, and be their God."* "In that 
day the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
established on the top of the mountains and ex- 
alted above the hills, and all nations shall flow 
unto it.'' t "The Lord God Almighty and the 
Lamb are the temple of it."i The Lord God and 
the Lamb will ever be the Temple, the light, the 
center and glory of that Tabernacle of God 
which will be with men. Surely nothing could 
have more fitly symbolized this glorious con- 
summation of Christ's burial and triumph than 
the ark of acacia wood in the holy place of the 
temple; and surely nothing could be thought 
nearer in fitness to this than that ark of red 
granite in the inner sanctuary of this " oldest and 
most gigantic of all human works." 

Over this chamber of fifties are those little 
rooms, to which access is found from the upper 
end of the grand gallery. There are fixe of 
them — of the same characteristics as the cham- 
ber below them, but unfinished, incomplete. 
May not those secret places, those little unfin- 
ished sanctuaries, typify the rest of the ran- 
somed ones whom Christ will bring with Him 
at His glorious epiphany ? " Those who sleep 
with Jesus will God bring with Him." What- 
ever these five chambers may mean, there is the 



* Rev. 21 : 1-3. 
t Isaiah 2 : 1. 
X Rev. 21 : 22. 



m 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



parable in all its fulness of the coming day of 
jubilee, when David^s prayer shall be fulfilled : 
"And let the whole earth be filled with his glo- 
ry. Amen and amen ! The prayers of David, 
the son of Jesse, are consummated and ended." 




CHAPTER X. 

THE PYRAMID AND THE PLEIADES. 

/ I \ HE most popular living astronomer, R. A. 
I Proctor, in an article in the American 
Cyclopedia, uses the following language : 
^ " That the Pyramid was erected for astronom- 
^ ical purposes may be admitted ; and we may ac- 
cept Prof. Smyth^s conclusion, * that the build- 
ing of the Pyramid corresponded to the time 
when the star a Draconis at its upper transit 
was visible ( as well by day as by night ) through 
the long inclined passage which forms one of 
the characteristic features of the Pyramid.' 
This would set the epoch about the year 2170 
B. 0. And it is a remarkable fact that, as Prof. 
Smyth points out, the Pleiades were at that 
time in a most peculiar position, well worthy of 
being monumentally commemorated; for they 
were actually at the commencing point of all 
right ascensions, or at the very beginning of 
running that great round of stellar chronologi- 
cal measuration which takes 25,827 years to re- 
turn into itself again, and has been called else- 
where for reasons derived from other studies 
than anything hitherto connected with the Great 
Pyramid, the ' great year of the Pleiades.' " 
The distinguished astronomer whose language 

177 



178 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

we have cited, accepts Professor Smyth^s con- 
clusion, " that the building of the Pyramid cor- 
responded to the time when the star a Draconis 
at its upper transit was visible (as well by day 
as by night) through that long inclined passage 
which forms one of the characteristic features 
of the Pyramid." 
We have previously dwelt on the symbolism 
/ of the Dragon star shining down that long pass- 
age^ to the subterranean chamber, or "bottom- 
less pit." The astronomical fact is there — un- 
deniable. But alongside of this is another fact 
equally patent. The tribes of earth, through all 
their history, have moved downwards in woe 
and crime to eternal darkness — have moved 
downwards under the malign light of some hor- 
rid principle of evil — some fatal spell— some 
monster spirit who has ruled in terror and in 
hatCo " The world lieth in the wicked one," says 
,^~ ^^ God^s Word. He is "the prince of the power 
If " of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the 
* . children of disobedience." He is called the 
^^ "God of this world," "the dragon," "that old 
Ta^T- serpent fche devil." To point to a north star 
might be a sufficient motive for building that 
i ^ I: long descending passage or excavating that bot- 



o^ 



tomless, dark chamber. To symbolize the down- 
2, ^ d^^^w^^^ career of nations, the tragic and gloomy 
V 4^ march of humanity, beneath the influence of 
^ Satan — this terrible fact of history was worthy 

5 of all the labor bestowed upon it. And there 






l- f 



it is to-day symbolizing that melancholy fact. 



V" 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 179 

But wMle Alpha Braconis looked down that 
dismal subterranean pit, the summit was lit by 
the light of the Pleiades — those gems of heaven 
whose beauty has fixed the admiring gaze of the 
pure and the thoughtful of every age. 

The seven bright stars in the constellation 
Taurus, whose beams blend in soft splendor in 
our autumn and winter skies, are twice men- 
tioned in God's Word, and man is asked, " Canst 
thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades ? " 
Now astronomy has fairly demonstrated that 
there is a relative movement of all the star-gal- 
axies round a central spot, and that this move- 
ment, like the march of mighty armies to celes- 
tial melody, includes every system in all the 
Vast realms of boundless space. Sublime 
thought! Those still orbs, those countless 
throngs of trooping worlds — from the mightiest 
sun that lights up his circling system to the 
vidette star that looks out on infinite chaos — all 
move with a measured tread to an eternal time- 
beat round some central orb — the capital of the 
universe. The Pleiades have been shown, by 
the astronomer Medlar, to be that supernal cen- 
ter around which all these marshaled systems 
move — the great throne of the Eternal ! 

" Canst thou bnid the sweet influences of the 
Pleiades *? '' as though God himself termed them 
the fountain of what men call gravitation — the 
source of all that binds the wheeling worlds in 
their orbits, as though this were God's palace, 



180 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

where He sits enthroned on the circle of the 
heavens. 

The well-known " great year of the Pleiades '^ 
witnessed the completion of the Great Pyramid. 
The builders so planned and so labored that this 
"Pillar of Witness" should stand forth com- 
plete in all its grand proportions and all its 
wondrous symbols at the very time at which the 
Pleiades shone upon its summit — when its up- 
lifted finger would point to the centre of the 
universe — to the throne of the Eternal. * 

This movement of all the star-galaxies round 
one central point has been questioned. It would 
not be consistent with the design of this work 
to enter upon a discussion of theories on this 
or any other astronomical question. Kant first 
asserted the idea of a resemblance to our solar 
system in the movement of the stellar system. 



* But by the retardation in the rising of the stars, al- 
ready explained, or precessional cycle, it can easily be told 
when the Pleiades were on the meridian at midnight in 
Eo^ypt. For we know that those soflly-beaming gems of 
beauty now come to the meridian in latitude 30° the 17th 
of November— that is, 57 days after the autumnal equinox 
of 21st September. From the 21st to the 1st of October 
are nine days, which, added to the 31 days of October, 
make 40 days ; and the other 17 of November make the 57. 
So that we know there has been a lapse of 57 days since 
the Pleiades were on the meridian of Egypt. Now as one 
year is to the lapse of this number of days, so is the pre- 
cessional cycle to the lapse of years since the Pyramid was 
built. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 181 

" As the planets are kept at their proper dis- 
tances and prevented from falling into each 
other, or into the sun, by the centrifugal force 
generated by their revolutions in their orbits, 
so Kant supposed the stars to be kept apart by 
a movement around some common center." 
" This theory of the stellar system, with some 
modifications, has been very generally held un- 
til the present time.^' * 

It was objected that the stars remained fixed 
from generation to generation, and therefore 
could not be in motion round a common center. 
To this Kant replied that the time of revolution 
was so long and the motion so slow that it was 
not perceptible with our imperfect means of ob- 
servation. The distinguished German astrono- 
mer who has confirmed the sublime theory of 
Kant, has also claimed the discovery of that 
center of the universe, and found it to be Alcy- 

^ one (or e Tauri), the central star of the Pleiades. 
But apart from this seemingly demonstrated 

-^ fact that Alcyone in the Pleiades is the center, 
the Pretorium of the starry host, the other fact is 
unquestionable — that when the Pleiades crossed 
the meridian above the pole at midnight, 2170 years 
/ before Christ, Alpha Draconis, or the Dragon 
star, was crossing helow the pole. It was in the 
autumn season of that one year when the me- 
ridian of the equinoxial point coincided with 



* Newcomb's Astronomy, p. 471. 



182 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

tlie Pleiades. It was, according to the usage of 
early times, the beginning of the year. It was, 
therefore, ihe year of the Pleiades, when they 
commenced that grand cycle which measures 
25,827 years, that the Dragon star gleamed from 
below the pole down the descending passage of 
the Pyramid into the pit ; while the ceutral star 
of the Pleiades shone in soft splendor upon its 
lofty summit; the descending passage pointed 
to the Dragon; the summit, like an index finger, 
pointed to the center of the universe. 

Monarch of all that human hands have reared, 
oldest and grandest thing that man has made, 
what are we to think of it ? 

But thou, of Altars old or Temples new, 

Standest alone, none like to thee ; for what could be 

Worthier of God, the holy and the true, 

Of human structures to His honor reared, 

Of a sublimer aspect ! Majesty, 

Strength, wisdom, grandeur — all are aisled 

In this Eternal Ark of beauty undefiled. 



■jawil-iilli&WS&iitiitiisWli 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE CAP STONE AND CORNER STONE. 

WE have gazed on the Pyramid in all its 
vastness, resting on its rocky bluff, on 
the borders of the desert, and looking 
over on the ancient land of Egypt — an altar to 
the Lord in the land of Egypt and a pillar 
thereof — a sign and a witness unto the Lord. 
We have entered its mysterious passages, and 
passed into its corridors, ante-rooms and royal 
chamber, tracing the symbols shaped in almost 
every stone. We return to the exterior. There 
it stands on a bed-rock whose depth has never 
been reached. What a type of the rock of 
ages, on which Christ's people are built ? The 
foundation standeth sure, firm as the everlast- 
ing hills. On this firm foundation rests the 
imperishable building reared of massive stones. 
What a type of the building of God through 
the Spirit, of living stones, reared by His own 
hand and placed iu the spiritual house by His 
mighty power ! 
The chief corner in this form of building is 
^ the ca'p stone, the head of the structure. In no 
other kind of building could the corner stone 
be the head, or cap stone. To this form of 
building with such cap stone, reference is evi- 

183 



184 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

dently made in such portions of Scripture as 
" The stone which the builders refused is become 
the head of the corner."* The head stone of the 
lofty corner — or apex of the Great Pyramid, 
must be in shape a pyramid itself. The whole 
structure, too, must be built with a view to this 
corner. It may be said to have been built up 
into this corner stone, as God^s people are said 
to be built up into Christ. It is different from 
any other stone in the building. These were 
square or cubical, or at least with rectangular 
corners. This single one had all its angles 
acute — all sharp points. It might well, therefore, 
be to the workmen a stone of stumbling. "Who- 
ever fell on it should be broken" (or cut). "On 
whomsoever it fell, (from that immense height) 
it will grind them to powder." This top stone 
or cap stone, the head of the corner, could be- 
long to a pyramid only. 

This form of building, therefore, must have 
been before the mind of the inspired men who 
used this imagery to represent Christ. He is 
the foundation rock. He is the head of the 
corner. The crown and climax, the first and 
the last, the Alpha and Omega. " Jesus Christ 
being the chief corner stone ; in whom the 
whole building fitly frame together groweth 
unto a holy temple in the Lord." f 



* Ps. 118 : 22. 
t Eph. 2 : 21. 



THE GREA T P YRA MID. 1 85 



The cap-stone is not now crowning that au- 
gust edifice. And so Christ is not now the 
recognized Lord of earth. Satan is " the prince 
of this world — the spirit that now worketh in 
the children of disobedience." But 

" He whose car the winds are, and the clouds 
The dust that waits upon his sultry march. 
When sin hath moved Him anrl His wrath is hot, 
Shall visit earth in mercy— shall descend. 
Propitious in His chariot, paved with love. 
And what His wrath hath blasted and defaced 
For man's Offense, shall witli a smile jepair." 

For the cap-stone shall be brought 
forth with shoutings of grace — grace 

UNTO IT. 




IS 



" NOW 'TIS MINE." 

" 1 asked of Time : ' To whom arose this high 
Majestic pile, here mouldering in decay ?' 
He answered not, but swifter sped his way. 
With ceaseless pinions winnowing the sky. 

To Fame I turned : " fSpeak thou, whose sons defy 
The waste of years, and deathless works essay !" 
She heaved a sigh, as one to grief a prey, 
And silent, downward cast her mournful eye. 

Onward I passed, but sad and thoughtful grown ; 
When, stern in aspect, o'er the ruined shrine, 
I saw Oblivion stalk from stone to stone. 

* Dread Power ! " I cried, " tell me, whose vast design—" 
He checked my further speech, in sullen tone : 
" Whose once it was, I care not ; now 'tis mine." 



186 



PART III. 



APPENDIX. 




^l»i^li.il^m1Kl^^^t!alkJi»^i 







APPENDIX. 



I. 



MEASUREMENTS. 

The base of the Pyramid covers 13 J square acres. 

The lenofth of a base side is 9131 Pyramid inches. 

TheA'ertical height is 5813 Pyramid inches. (484) feet. 

Solid contents of the Pyramid 10,340,000 cubits. 

The mouth of the entrance passage is, above the 
ground 50 feet. 

Entrance east of the center 25 feet 

Height of Doorway 47.24 inches. 

Breadth " 41.56 inches. 

Dips at an angle of. 26028' 

Subterranean Roclc Chamber, below the center of the 
base 100 feet. 

Subterranean Bock Cliamber is .46 feet long. 

" " " 28 feet broad. 

Ascendinsj passage leading from the entrance to the 
Grand Gallery, has its junction with the entrance 
passage at the distance from its mouth of 
about 988 inches. 

Height of passage 47.24 inches. 

Breadth " 41.56 inches. 

Elevation " 26 degrees. 

Southward up the first ascending passage to the com- 
mencement of the Grand Gallery is 1542.4 inches. 

The floor length of Grand Gallery from north begin- 
ning to its southern terminus is 1881.6 inches. 

Height of Grand Gallery-. 339.5 inches. 

189 



190 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

Height of the door at the north end of Grand Gallery 
is 53 inches. 

Door at the south end leading to the ante-cham- 
ber 43^ inches. 

From the beginning of the Grand Gallery floor to the 
well called Souterrain, is 33 inches. 

The southern wall of the Grand Gallery impends 1 degree. 

Length of Grand Gallery midway between floor and 
roof 1878.4 inches. 

Number of roof stones to this gallery 36 

" overlapping stones on side walls 7 

Cubical contents of Grand Gallery 36,000,000 inches. 

Strange exit from the upper corner of Grand Gallery, 
above floor 28 feet. 

Length of short passage leading from the Grand Gal- 
lery to the ante-chamber is 52.5 inches. 

Length of ante-chamber 116.26 inches. 

Breadth from east to west ..65 inches. 

The height 149 inches. 

Thickness of Wall of passage-way between ante and 
King's Chamber 100 inches. 

Length of King's Chamber... 412 inches. 

Breadth " " 206 inches. 

Height " " 230 inches. 

Masonry shielding King's Chamber from outside heat 
or cold 180 feet. 

Temperature of King's Chamber 50 degrees. 

Courses of masonry from base of Pyramid to King's 
Chamber 50 

Wall courses of granite in King's Chamber 5 

Height of first four courses 4 feet 

Fifth and lower one sinks one-tenth below floor. 

Outside length of Coffer in King's Chamber 90.01 in. 

" depth " " " 41.27 

" breadth " " " 38.65 



II. 



HAVE NOT THE MEASURES GIVEN IN THIS WORK 
BEEN CONTRADICTED? 

/ I \HE question which we have placed as a 

i caption to this article must be answered 

in the affirmative. But in thus answering 

it, another must be asked — What force is there 

in such contradictions ? 

The measures of Col. Howard Yyse were ta- 
ken with a care and precision which could not 
fail to approximate exactness. He spent months 
of time and a moderate fortune in his investiga- 
tions at the Pyramid. His measures in the main 
agreed with the old Oxford professor who care- 
fully measured the passages and chambers of 
the Pyramid two hundred years before him. 
Vyse's measures agreed also, with few errors 
on one side or the other, with those of the 
Prench engineers who accompanied Napoleon 
into Egypt. 

With these and other measures before his 
eyes, Piazzi Smyth, a practical astronomer, 
whose life had been spent in the observation of 
star transits, and in measuring lines and angles, 
spent four months in measuring and remeasur- 
ing these same basic and other lines and inner 
passages of the Pyramid. He had instruments 
made for this express purpose — iron rods which 

191 



192 



THE GREA T P YRAMID. 



could be pushed through slides and measured 
with scarce a possibility of error. As an exam- 
ple of his usual method we give his measure of 
the inside of the coffer. It will be observed 
that he measured the width, first at the top, 
then a little lower, and so down to the bottom, 
so as to find the least deviation caused by any 
unevenness in the sides. So of the depth — 
measuring at different distances from the ends. 

INSIDE DEPTH OF COFFER. 

" The measure of this element is taken from 
the inside bottom of the coffer — which is appa- 
rently smooth and flat — up in the shortest line 
to the level of the original top surface of the 
north, the east, and the south sides ; and of the 
west side also, presumably^ before it was cut 
down to the level of the ledge which runs round 
the inner edges of the north, east, and south 
sides, and all across the west side's top. 



Part of length where observa- 
tions were taken . 


Part of breadth where observa- 
tions were taken. 


Inches south of inner N. end. 


Near 
Eabt 
side. 


Near 
middle 


Near 

West 
side. 


Mean at 
ench part 
of length. 


0-6 

30 

5-0 
100 
240 

Mean at each part of breadth 


34-30 
34 44 
34-42 
34-40 
34-36 


34-28 
34-36 
34-41 
34-38 
31-38 


34 26 
34-35 
34-28 
34 28 
34-26 


34-28 
34-38 
34-37 
34-;i5 
34-33 


34-38 


34-36 


34-29 


84-34 


General mean or Inside dei 
of coffer - - - 


oth) =34-34 British inches. 
S — 34- 31 Pyramid inches. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 193 

The following, from Smyth^s "Life and Work 
at the Great Pyramid,'^ shows the difficulties to 
be overcome in getting its accurate measures, 
and the almost absolute certainty of the results : 

" This vessel, the sole contents of the dark 
King's Chamber, and termed, according to va- 
rious writers, stone box, granite chest, lidless 
vessel, porphyry vase, black marble sarcopha- 
gus, and coffer — is composed, as to its material, 
of a darkish variety of red, and possibly syen- 
itic, granite. And there is no difficulty in seeing 
this; for although the ancient polished sides 
have long since acquired a deep chocolate hue, 
there are such numerous chips effected on all 
the edges in recent years, that the component 
crystals, quartz, mica, and felspar, may be seen 
( by the light of a good candle) even brilliantly. 

"The vessel is chipped around, or along, every 
line or edge of bottom, sides, and top ; and at 
its south-east corner the extra accumulation of 
chippings extends to a breaking away of nearly 
half its height from the top downwards. It is, 
moreover, tilted up at its south end by a black 
jasper pebble, about 1-5 inch high ( such pebbles 
are found abundantly on the desert hills outside 
and west of the Great Pyramid), recently pushed 
in underneath the south-east corner. The vessel 
is therefore in a state of strain, aggravated by 
the depth to which the vertical sides have been 
broken down as above ; and great care must be 
taken in outside measures, not to be misled by 
the space between some parts of the bottom 



194 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

and the floor, itself also of polished red gran- 
ite." 

These measures, let it be observed, agree 
within a fraction with those taken by Ool. Yyse 
in 1837, and by Professor Greaves two hundred 
years earlier, and have been confirmed by J. A. 
Grant, a resident of Cairo, and Mr. Waynman 
Dixon, a distinguished civil engineer. 

Over against all this is the statement of Mr. 
McGarvey, a theological teacher in Lexington, 
Kentucky, who recently visited the Eastern 
Lands, and has published a very interesting 
book of his travels and studies called " Bible 
Lands.'' 

He spent some two hours at the Pyramid 
viewing its exterior, ascending to its summit 
and examining its interior. A very brief time 
of course could be given to each part, and 
the examination must have been very super- 
ficial. 

He had a " tape line " with him and measured 
as he hurried along. His account of this is inter- 
esting. He says of the entrance passage : 

" Our only mode of descending would be to 
slide down and butt our brains oat at the bottom, 
or to have a rope tied at the outside to which we 
could hold as we descended, but for the fact 
that notches have been chiseled in the floor at 
equal intervals to furnish a foot-rest. These 
were so rudely cut that our boots were contin- 
ually slipping on them, and but for the help of 
the Arabs, whose bare feet seemed to stick to the 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 195 

stones as if they were glued to it, we should 
have at last drifted into the sliding method 
above mentioned. With two Arabs to help 
each of us, and one apiece to hold a candle be- 
fore us, we managed to get along without breaks 
or bruises, but to take accurate measurements 
under these circumstances required some 
patience, and much straining of our muscles. 
(Very probable, although he says nothing about 
the strain on his tape-line ! ) Here I note the 
first serious inaccuracy of measurement given in 
the little book of Mr. Seiss' called a Miracle in 
Stone, He gives the length of this chamber 
(p. 84: ) as 1000 inches, which equals 83 feet 4 
inches. I am certain it is several yards longer 
than this." 

Now in the first place Mr. Seiss never made 
any measurements — never even visited the 
Pyramid, and is guilty of no "serious inaccuracy." 
He simply gives in round numbers the scien- 
tifically-ascertained measurements of Greaves, 
Jomard (the French savant,) Col. Yyse, Piazzi 
Smyth, the astronomer, and Petrie and Dixon, 
civil engineers. These men measured foot by 
foot, repeating in some instances the operation 
a number of times. And they all give nearly 
the same result — the average being 988 inches. 

But Mr. McGarvey, with no engineering pre- 
tensions, for whose accuracy no man of sense 
would vouch, while straining his muscle and 
held up by Arabs, brought out a measure 



196 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

SEVERAL YARDS greater than those pains-taking, 
scientific astronomers or engineers. 

A difference in fractions of an inch, as occurs 
in the different scientific measurements, is ac- 
counted for by heat, pressure, and the possible 
slip of the carefully adjusted iron rod; but how 
shall we account for a difference of several 
whole yards in his, Mr. McGarvey's, great feat 
of measuring whUe held up by two Arabs, and 
in a painful strain of his muscles. 

This writer also gives a further account of 
his entry into the King's Chamber and his tape- 
line measures of the coffer. 

" When we entered the King's Chamber, our 
Arahs^ whose noise had been already very an- 
noying, set up such a Babel of loud talking and 
quarreling with one another, that we could have 
no conversation. Every one wanted to magnify 
his own importance by telling what we already 
knew, and he was equally anxious to push his 
neighbor into the background so as to get all 
the hacJcskish to himself. I finally succeeded, 
by yelling louder than all of them together, in 
bringing them to silence, and posting four of 
the candle-bearers near the four corners, while 
a fifth candle was held near us to throw a light 
on our measures ( certainly very much needed). 
We first measured the coffer, or stone cof&n, on 
the west end of the room, and the only movable 
object in the chamber. We found its measure- 
ment exactly [of course, and if so the only exact 
one ever made of itj 6 feet 6 inches in length, 



THE GREAT PYRAMID, 197 

2 feet 2^ inches in width, and 2 feet 8 inches in 
depth. These figures show that its interior cu- 
bit capacity is exactly 6,144 inches, whereas 
Mr. Seiss, in making it appear that its capacity 
is the same as that of the ark of the covenant 
made by Moses, represents it 9,250 inches." 

We may repeat the remark that Mr. Seiss 
made no measures; he simply quoted those 
made by the practical engineers whose names 
we have given. But with these Mr. McGarvey, 
tape-line in hand, after some fifteen minutes in 
the chamber, amid the yelling of the Arabs, and 
with nothing but a candle ''to throw light on his 
measures," joins issue. His tape-line measure 
under the candle-light, however hurriedly made, 
is exact. Theirs, though carefully repeated day 
after day, with sliders made for the purpose, 
and steel hoops to fasten them to the edge, 
counting to the hundredth of an inch — though 
tested two hundred years apart and re-tested by 
civil engineers again and again — cannot stand 
a moment before Mr. McGarvey^s tape-line. 

For instance, he says the depth is 2 feet 8 

inches = 32 inches. Compare this with — 

Professor Greaves 1638 34.3 

Dr. Wilson 1805 34.5 

Howard Vyse 1837 34.4 

Piazzi Smyth 1867 34^ 

This last measure was a three days' work, 
after the coffer had been swept out and then 
washed and sponged with soap and water. It 
was done with all the allowances for the loss of 



198 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

part of the west side of the original size — un- 
known to Mr. McGarvey with his tape-line and 
candle. It was done under the full blaze of 
light illuminating the coffer, with no one to dis- 
turb. 




III. 



LETTER FROM THE ASTRONOMER ROYAL FOR 
SCOTLAND. 

15 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, ) 

May 4, 1882. j 

Dear Mrs. S. R. Ford: 

Your very interesting letter of last month has 
just arrived, with your several Mms., including, 
not least, the grand testimonial to your worthy 
husband^s Pyramid Lecture. 

You ask me some crucial questions, but pre- 
fix them by far too high an estimate of the little 
I know and can say about the Great Pyramid; 
for I know only, as a practical measurer, certain 
facts of number, weight and measure ; but the 
interpretation thereof may be destined to fall 
into far better hands. 

These are no secrets, no mysteries ; imperfec- 
tions of mine unfortunately too many; — but 
within their limits of error, there are the ipsis- 
sima verha of the ancient architect, in the shape 
of the forms and sizes of the stones he was 
Divinely inspired to introduce. 

Now of those, and what he constructed with 
them, you desire to know about the grand gal- 
lery, so-called ; — better as you call it the Gos- 
pel Gallery. 

It is not a simple, unique length ; there are 

199 



200 



THE GREAT PYRAMID, 



three lengths, as intended by the Inspired Arch- 
itect, and made to be so by the manner in which 
he has introduced the great step, at the upper, 
or farther, or southern end of the gallery. 

First, the shortest possible length for gallery 
is thus : 




1813 + 68.6 = 1881.6 
By measuring through the step in line of floor produced. 
Second, the next shortest : 




1813 -f 70.8 = 1883.8 
By measuring through step to corner of floor. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID, 201 



Third — The longest. 




1813 4- 36 + 61 == 

By nietisuiiiig over surface of step. 

Any one of these mdicates that the time of 
the next great measurement of the Divine Ruler 
of the world and men is so near that we ought 
all to be never more watchful than now, for the 
rapture of the saint, — but need not expect the 
whole and final appearance of the Second Com- 
ing of Our Lord before all men, in power and in 
anger too, at this very instant. There is a little 
more time left still for repentance ; but let no 
one presume how long ; nor be disturbed at the 
events still to take place before that consumma- 
tion arrives. 

Meanwhile the dead-alive condition of Turkey, 
the persecutions and atrocities of Eussiahs 
against God's people, the Jews, the rise of a new 
life in Egypt within the last few months, are all 
in the right direction, and bewilder the oldest 
diplomatic statesmen, who have gone on hith- 
erto well enough, they think, without God in all 
their worldly calculations. 

I remain, yours, respectfully, 
±4- 0. PiAzzi Smyth. 



ly. 



DID THE CAPHTORIM BUILD THE GREAT 
* PYRAMID ? 

WHILE profane history gives no record 
of the origin of Egypt as a nation, the 
Bible sheds a gleam of light on its es- 
tablishment, and points, as no tradition does, to 
the men who built the Great Pyramid. 

Egypt is called to this day Mazr by the na- 
tives — a name most evidently derived from 
Mizraim, grandson of Noah. The fragments of 
Egyptian history which have come down to us, 
when stripped of fable, ascribe the establish- 
ment of its first monarchy to Mizraim in the 
year of the world 1816. Now we read (Gen. 10) 
that Mizraim was the son of Ham. " And Miz- 
raim begat Pathrusim, from whom came Caph- 
torim ; " and the very region in which the Great 
Pyramid stands was called Caphtor. Let this 
remarkable passage in Deut. 2:23 be noticed. 
God, encouraging Moses in view of the terrible 
enemies before him, tells him, " The Caphtorim 
which came out of Caphtor destroyed them (the 
Avim ) and dwelt in their stead.'''' And in Amos 
9:7, " Have I not brought up Israel out of the 
land of Egypt and the Philistines from Caphtor V 
The Philistines were Caphtorim. God did 
not permit them to be destroyed with the Ca- 
naanites. Caphtor was that part of Egypt 
where those Caphtorim lived. 

SOS 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 203 

This passing notice of the founders of pre- 
historic empires, shows that Mizraim founded 
the Egyptian monarchy; that his grandson, 
Oaphtor, succeeded him, or at least held such 
position as to give name to the region where 
the Pyramid stands ; and that his descendants 
were driven from Egypt. Their sojourn in 
Egypt is termed by Manetho an irruption. And 
Wilkinson (Yol. 1., p. 38 ) says : " From the pre- 
ceding extracts of Manetho, as from other pas- 
sages in his work, it appears reasonable to con- 
clude that Egypt was, at one time, invaded and 
occupied by a powerful Asiatic people who held 
the country in subjection; and viceroys being- 
appointed to govern it, these obtained the names 
of Pastors, or Shepherd Kings." 

As it is now ascertained that the pyramids 
were built 2170 years before Christ, it is almost 
certain that these Shepherd Kings, or Caphto- 
rim, built the Pyramids before the Pharaohs 
grasped the reins of government, and before 
the inhabitants became idolatrous and were bru- 
talized by the most abominable superstitions. 
Herodotus was told by the priests that these 
men built the Pyramid, and that they went up 
to Canaan, and built the City of Jerusalem. 
How all this agrees with the reference to these 
Caphtorim ! 



XaXDC l9.ao.— An altar to / ^ 'r J^ ^^ » ^ IN THE MIDST OF EaYEt* 




Thh Great Pyramid. Built, 22170 B- C 




^MffD'PVRAMta. 



SFCQKD PYBAIUOU 



V. 



INDICATIONS ON THE DIAaRAM. 

A, A, A, A, Corner sockets of tlie Pyramid's base. 

B, B, B, Pyramid cut in half, viewed from the east. 

C, C, C, Entrance passaoe. 

D, D, First ascending passage. 

E, E, E, The well. 

F, The subterranean chamber. 

G, G, G, Kative rock, left standing. 

H, Horizontal passage to Queen's Chamber. 

I, Sabbatic or Queen's Ciiamber. 

J, Grand niche in Queen's Chamber. 

K, K, Ventilating tubes to Queen's Chamber. 

L, Grand Gallery. 

M, M, M, Rampstones, incisions, and vertical settings 
along the sides of Grand Gallery's base. 

N, Great step at south end of Grand Gallery. 

O, Granite leaf in anteroom to Kirig's Chamber. 

P, P, Anteroom to King's Chamber. 

Q, King's t^hamber. 

R, Grand Coffer in King's Chamber. 

S. S, S, S, S, Chambers of construction. 

T, T, Ventilating tubes to King's Chamber. 

U, Supposed undiscovered Chamber. 

V, V, Cartouches of the Kings, Shufu and Nem-Shufu, 
otherwise called Cheops or Suphis, and Sen-Suphis, or 
Noh-Suphis, under whose co-regency the Great Pyramid 
was built. 

W, W, Sections of next two pyramids, showing their in- 
terior openings, 

X, X, Al Mamoun's forced passage. 

Y, Time-marks of the building of the pyramid. 

Z, Z, Z, Z, Casing stones, now. gone. 

205 



VI. 

DR. PHILLIP SCHAFF'S OBJECTION. 

IN bis excellent book, '• Travels in Egypt 
and the Holy Land," Dr. Phillip Schaff, 
after noticing very fairly Piazzi Smyth's 
measurements of the Great Pyramid and his 
deductions therefrom, asks, "If this was the 
design of the Pyramid, why is it not mentioned 
in the Bible?" 

But it is mentioned by Job. And then the 
theory of Smyth is based on the fact that this 
mighty pillar is for a coming age — for the day 
when Egypt is " to cry unto the Lord." Schaff 
alludes to this wonderful prophecy in Isa. 19 : 
19. *' In that day shall there be an altar in the 
midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the 
border thereof, and it shall be for a sign and 
for a witness unto the Lord in the land of 
Egypt." This, says Dr. Schaff, refers to a 
future event. Grranted : but that future event 
is the witness it is to give — not its beginning or 
erection ! This Pyramid has stood in its solemn 
grandeur through the ages — silent, objectless. 
It is now bearing record, as even skeptics and 
evolutionists are forced to admit. It does 
stand in the midst of the fan-shaped land of 
Egypt, and yet is on the border thereof. It is 
the only spot on which a pillar could stand and 

20G 



THE GREA T P VRAM ID. 207 



meet the demands of the passage — "in the 
midst of the land of Egypt and on the border 
thereof.'' So it is mentioned in the Bible. 

But this learned writer asks, as others have, 
" Why all this symbolism confined to this one 
Pyramid % " But there is the fact — %t is con- 
fined to it. There is no high science — no star 
pointing — no inner passages in any Pyramid but 
this. It stands alone in its marvelous disclos- 
ures, all the other pyramids being blundering 
imitations of this perfect Pyramid. 

Why, then, it is again asked, was all this evi- 
dence of lofty intellect in those who built it — 
all this symbolism of the exact sciences, and of 
the dispensations of God, hidden so long from 
the knowledge of men — why left to this age to 
be uncovered and recognized *? 

The answer is on the surface. The Pyramid 
was reared in that early age as a memorial and 
a witness, which should disclose its long-hidden 
evidence in an age of scientific atheism and 
general apostasy. " In that day, it shall be 
for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord in 
the Land of Egypt, for they shall cry unto the 
Lord, and He shall send them a savior." Egypt 
is still under the heel of the oppressor; is still 
wrapped in darkness ; she is not yet relieved 
from the curse pronounced upon her for her 
sins ; she is still without God. But the oracle 
which pronounced her long night of oppression, 
also foretells her return to the Lord. And in 
that day shall this column of witness testify 



208 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



unto the Lord in the land of Egypt. Not till now 
have the wonders of the Pyramid been disclosed, 
and that disclosure is attracting the world, and 
scientific atheists stand dumb before its testi- 
mony for God. i- 

Were the ruins of the Ark found amid the 
snows of Ararat, and measured and identified, 
it would be no greater proof of the origin of 
the race and the truth of the Bible, than is this 
voiceful monument " in the midst of the land of 
Egypt and on the border thereof." 

Dr. Schafi*, after describing with enthusiastic 
eloquence the view from the summit of the 
Great Pyramid, describes his descent and ascent 
through the inner openings or passages. " We 
came out covered with dust and perspiration, 
glad to reach the sunlight and open air." 

As Dr. Schaff left them and hailed the sun- 
light and the breeze r^must he not have been 
struck with the thought, that the men who built 
this massive pillar had some object in construct- 
ing those recesses with such consummate skill 
and finish ^ What is that object % No meaning 
was ever depicted there — no idolatrous design 
mars their simple beauty. But their measure- 
ments and simple beauty do most accurately 
symbolize the event of the race— the revelation 
of the righteousness of faith through the atone- 
ment of Christ ! 



■'^ /5^7 



